yeah, from what I've seen it's all about the options and the incongruity of mechanical/organic aspects that you can make happen when you're not stuck to a single way of working.
TR-808 has been my favourite drum machine for years, it's totally awesome in a non-drummer kind of way, both in the amazing sound quality of all the instruments that fit together so beautifully as a whole, and the rock solidness of the beat grid (even a swung beat grid when you feed it swung dinsync). But what makes it really work is when this is happening alongside the natural and organic drift in how the drums (kick especially) sound from hit to hit.. I've never really liked sample based machines because they are right on the beat like an 808 but sound exactly the same every time. seems to get a bit tiring or something.
but on the other hand, Just this week I had my eyes opened by a friend of mine who is an electronic producer but also an amazing drummer - I got an mpc3000 the other day mostly because he uses one, and does some amazing work with it, and I wanted to get me some of that action...
Anyway, he came over to have a play with my new machine and show me some tricks, and the one really cool thing I learned from watching him is that even though the mpc is using static samples and loops exactly the same from loop to loop, he was playing in beats by hand at max timing resolution, and rather than something I'd do that would rely on quantising to a grid and then using a swing setting to make things swing, he just managed to play stuff in funky way and built up the most amazing beats in a rigid loop with rigid samples that still breathed because all the parts had their own swing amounts and swing positions. Was very humbling to watch.
so yeah... now I gotta get me some of that spot on pad playing coordination, and talented drummer rhythmic feel stuff. unfortunately it's not available anywhere on ebay. Does anyone know where I can buy some??
