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Roland Drum Machines:
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The MC 307 is a great electronic drum machine made by Roland. I am lucky enough to own one so read on to find out what I think of Roland Drum Machines as a piece of equipment for the novice producer.
Roland is world renowned for producing great musical instruments. Roland keyboards and pianos are regarded as some of the best and easiest to use. Roland drum machines are also regarded as the top in their class.
The reason why people like Roland drum machines is that these, like all Roland musical instruments, contain great sounds for use in your own music.
If you want to make kicking dance music then I totally recommend trying out any of the Roland groove range of drum machines. The Roland MC 307 is a vital part of my bedroom studio setup.
Unfortunately, it's been discontinued so finding the MC-307 will be difficult at best. However, Roland does offer an alternative that I can highly recommend.
If you're interested in getting started in dance music production then I recommend you have a look at the Roland SP-606 Sampling Workstation with built-in GrooveBox Drum Machine.
What is an electronic drum machine?
An electronic drum machine is a musical instrument that allows you to program in sounds to create your own music. Drum machines let you create your own drum patterns and bassline loops with the thousands of built in sounds.Within minutes of getting my Roland drum machine I had garage beats coming at me. I love just playing around creating interesting sounds.
The Roland drum machines have many effects such as filters and flangers. These effects combined with the all the built in sounds make this drum machine a great piece of equipment for any DJ who is interested in getting into dance music production. A synth or a sampler cannot sequence complete tracks like a drum machine can. The great thing is if you get a synth or a sampler later you can control them with your drum machine and make your tracks even better.
I will now go through some of the features of my MC 307 drum machine as an example of what drum machines are capable in general.
Drum machines do drums right?
The first thing you will want to find out about is the drum section. Most drum machines (the MC 307 included) also have a synth for creating the melody and bass lines but this section will concentrate on the drum kits included in the MC 307 for your beat making pleasure.
This machine has about 40 different drum kits. That is a heap of different drum sound to fiddle with.
Making a new drum pattern is easy. Start by simply setting the machine to a blank user pattern and select the rhythm part. Then select the patch (this is the collection of drum sounds). You can test the sounds by hitting the keypads.
Step by step guide to making your first pattern:
Now is the time to put the beats in some kind of order. Press record and select TR REC when promted on the LCD disply. This type of recording makes each key of the keypad a 16th of a bar. So the first beat of a bar is the first key and the second beat is the fifth key.
Play on the keypad until you have a kick sound. Now you must press the TR REC button (above the keypad on the right) to start putting this sound in the 4 bar pattern. Put the kick beats in the first bar with the keypad then do the same in the other bars by navigating with the fast foreward and back buttons above the play button.
Press the TR REC button to stop placing the kick sound and go back to the kit to select a new sound.
Keep on layering in the sounds this way until you're happy with your beat pattern.
Making your melody:
You can try out melodies by simply selecting a patch and playing on the keypad. You can layer in 7 different melodic parts using the part select button to choose which part to use. The best way to record your melody is to choose the record in real time option after you press the record button.
Using your drum machine for dance music production:
I use my drum machine with my computer to produce compete tracks. Dance music is a professional field and it saves a lot of time to lay out complete tracks on a sequencer like Cubase. I often record in the audio from my drum machine messing with the controls to make interesting sounds.
If you want to know how to sequence midi to get the most out of any drum machine click to my
introductory Cubase tutorial.
