Home Studio Tips

The Boss Dr. Rhythm 770 is an awesome drum machine.

Let's face it. If you are a solo artist and you are into music production, you're going to need some drums eventually. Unless you know some drummers or have a drum set in your studio, you'll probably end up using a drum machine.

The reality of things is, drum machines will never sound as good as a real guy beating the skins. But there are a few things you can do in the studio to make things sound a little more real.

When I recorded my CD's in my home studio I used the Boss Dr. Rhythm 770. It really made my music come alive. I found quite a few drum kits that I really liked. I was also able to add effects to the drums. The Boss Dr-770 has pattern and song editing. So you can really get some intricate beats.

The Dr Rhythm 770 can also just build a beat by just jamming on the touchpads. You can also use the touchpads to just "play along" to songs also. There are 400 preset patterns and 400 user patterns. 10,000 pattern memory onboard. Wow. User patterns ranging from Rock, Pop, Fusion, Blues, Country, Reggae, Jazz, Latin, Dance, World and more.

I had used an Alesis drum machine before the Dr. Rhythm, but it was a lot more cumbersome and harder to program. It also had power supply issues. Twice, I had to have it repaired at the shop. Both times losing all saved patterns and songs. Not good, considering I was just borrowing it from a friend. I could have bought my own drum machine for what the Alesis repairs came to. Not to mention losing songs really set me back in the recording process.

There were a few issues that I didn't like about the Boss Dr. Rhythm 770. The cymbals sound is...how can I say this nicely...not so great. The toms sound very synthetic and just plain bad as well. I thought all of the other sounds were very natural sounding, except the cymbals and the toms. I hope on the newer models they've corrected these samples? I've only used the Dr. Rhythm 770.

I first programmed my main snare and bass patterns. Then created a song with those patterns. I created fill parts using minimal toms or tuned and tweaked them to my taste. Then I borrowed a few cymbals from a buddy (different guy than the Alesis guy). I recorded the cymbals as samples with a nice mic and placed them in the songs by hand using Pro Tools. It really made the drum machine sound a little more "human." I also made sure that my main beat has a certain amount of swing to it. I usually add quite a bit of reverb to most of my drum tracks as well.

It can also be really time consuming programming drum tracks. I typically would program the entire song on the Dr Rhythm 770 before recording a single note. Then I would record the drums on Pro Tools, then layer everything else on top. This way everything stays in perfect time.

The other useful thing about doing the drums first is, you can change tempo and do punk rock versions of the same song. Or just change the drum kit, and suddenly the song sounds completely different. Very inspirational for getting your ideas flowing in the recording studio.

I toyed with the idea of using the Boss Dr Rhythm 770 as a back up when I play live. But then I decided that would be cheesy. Nothing worse than a guy, a guitar and a drum machine. Somehow, I don't think I'm cool enough to pull that off.

Ultimately, you want to actually find someone who can play the drums. But if you live in Iceland and are surrounded by penguins, you can get by with the Boss Dr. Rhythm (Do igloos have outlets?). There have been thousands of tracks using nothing more than a drum machine. Actually, the eighties used nothing more than a drum machine.

But either way you look at it, your home studio is incomplete without a drum machine or decent drum program. I would look into the Boss Dr. Rhythm 770 drum machines, 5 years later mine is still rockin. Quality music production, relies on quality gadgets.