I apologize in advance if i've overlooked an already existing, active thread about this. I made a quick search and the only one i found was closed and had about 8 posts with no info.

Alright, i'm interested in purchasing a drum machine mainly to teach our current drummer how the fuck to play. He's never taken a course for music in his life (and is surprisingly good), but he doesn't understand beats, time signatures, or anything else about music and theory. So trying to explain to him a riff i've written is very hard, even when i dumb it down to "alright, this riff goes like 'one-two-three-one-two-three'"....he doesn't even seem to understand that!

Now before you hackle me to get a new drummer.....we've tried. There's a couple better drummers we've talked to, but they have no place to practice....so our current guy is sadly all we have.

So, i need something that can handle Death Metal style drumming. Examples of bands would be Gorguts, Immolation, Martyr and Death. We need something good enough for this, and possibly to record a shit demo we could send off to clubs to try and set up shows. We're always gonna "try" and have a real drummer, this is just an aid to help us progress a little faster.

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that is a funny little problem you have there!!!

but what I would suggest is actually sitting your drummer down and teaching him musical theory,

of course you could not do any of that and let him come up with some truely creative shit but as for getting a drum machine to do that, I wouldn't, just use a drum loop program like fruity loops or something like that.

Oh, I had to do that to a certain bass guitar player. Actually, I made a small factsheet,something along the lines of "a crash course in music theory", I'll replicate it in a digital form fairly soon, but so far I can only point to this one site : http://musictheory.net

Sit your drummer through the lessons, but that site doesn't even mention counting when it comes to note durations, so you'll have to teach him to count yourself.

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*sigh*
You see, my drummer is a moron. The only hope we have is a drum machine. He doesn't own a computer, there are no computers in the basement we practice. I'm not going to be using a drum machine to teach him everything, mainly what i'll be doing is adding drums to a song i've written, very basic drums, so that he can understand the riffs. From there he can learn the beats of that song and build off of it.

There's no way the guy will learn any theory. We've tried explaining very simple stuff and he looks dumbfounded and his eyes start twitching. He won't take lessons because of some bullshit reason he'll make up, and we tried getting him to buy an electric drum kit to play at home but he decided against it.

Oh, speaking of which, he only practices once a week, DURING band practice. That's the only time he ever touches a drum kit. We wanted him to at least get an electric kit to practice at home, which would have been perfect, but no. He wants to replace his current kit with newer parts. So our last hope is this drum machine.

So i ask again.....does anyone know anything about them? I'm going out today to hopefully find one i can rent, or at least get info from some people at the music shops.

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I have no fucking knowledge of drum machines, but how 'bout this?
You use fruityloops to make different drum riffs, and you record or copy/past it into a .wav file in a audio editor or something along the lines. You then have an drum track for a song, wich you can burn to cd to let your drummer listen to the riffs, or you can use to record later.

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If he's such a moron, then just dump his ass. He apparently means nothing to you by the way you talk about him, so just find a new drummer.

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Read his first post...
I have no knowledge of drum machines. Maybe get a metronome for him for the time being.

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okay I am being serious now, kidnap him and FORCE him to learn theory, seriously I know how much you have stressed his lack of mental application in this subject but I will stress that once he gets the basics down you will not need to worry about a drum machine wither that or force him to get lessons, hell pay for him to get them if you need to.

Oops...my bad. I'll just back into this corner and shut up now...

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The band Fuck...I'm Dead doesn't even have a drummer. They just use a drum machine (live and on the record).

Personally I would just dump him and either do what they do or be drummerless for the moment.

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*sigh*...... The guy I jam with is exactly the same. Except he plays more than once a week. It's bloody frustrating. Some people are just unteachable.

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Try getting DVD/VHS on music theory, and/or drumming videos. Sit down with him and watch them, eventually it will sink in. Practice more! 1 day a week is not enough (especially for DM) ROCK ON!

Just because he's the best you've got doesn't mean you have to settle with shit. He's keeping you behind. Dump his ass in the kerb, and work without, then when you have something you can show it to other drummers and if they like it they'll have more of a reason to join you. You're letting him get away with being shitty by keeping him, you're making all the effort and he does nothing, so he's just a parasite that needs to go.

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Give him an ultimatum of some sort. Tell him to pull his weight or piss off. Either try and learn some theory or leave the band.

wow, this sounds very familiar to me, a drummer who needs to do shit but cant, and now a guitarist(being me) is asking other drummers for help, thats is funny. i guess im not the only one. i used FRUITY LOOPS as some others have mentioned already. it is realy fun to use. it is not that hard after a while. and you can make the drums do anything you want. even sound better than your real drummer. my drummer uses triggers, and his drums are like the best sounding NATURAL drums i have heard around were i live, i think instead of learning to play drums better, he learned how to tune those suckers ha ha. but no, he is good. he just doesnt practice that often. he only practices t our practice kinda like the other guy. and we only practice like once a week, witch sucks, but this is becouse we practice at my sisters house, wich means we cant practice everyday. but it is kool they let us practice there. we are gonna move into the drummers house as soon as its finished being built!! ha ha, luckily my drummer has a couple of extra drum peices witch he silenced, then he uses his drum module to practice during the week while we are not practicing, he silences them, becouse he lives in an apartment, but yea dude, if you definitly want to take control of the drums, program them yourself on FRUITY LOOPS it is way worth it!

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ive used a few over the years, but i dont know much about them, ive noticed tho there are 2 variations with the ones ive sat down with, the first was an alesis, i believe, really confusing, has a record option,you set the time signature and choose thru alot of drumsounds, it ticks out the tempo, then you have to punch in each sound, this thing is a pain in the ass, you end up wanting to punt the thing out the window.the second one is the type i see dj's have for creating techno, looks very expensive but seems easier to use, you see like 1 or 2 rows of 16 buttons, they are LEDs, they light up across the span indicating tempo, whats good about this version is you can see the beats in the span and add sounds or take away sounds as you please,arranging your tempo, finding your sounds, saving your beats, attaching diferent beats seems alot easier with this particular type, i dont know brand names tho, also if its newer you can get a pedal for activating the beat, probably good for jamming so you can turn on and off beats when you like, sorry i cant be more informative, but yeah, do not get the kind that tick

my drummer was the same too

drum machines are very fake sounding and it wouldnt be much help to your drummer. I would buy him a couple videos. show him the derek roddy one and maybe he'll sit down and play harder

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Just try out the Boss DR670 (there are Cheaper ones and I aint using it)
I just practize with a drumcomputer myself, it works great.
My Drumteacher plays the Boss thing and at first I was amazed how nice it sounded. (Mortician used it on a few records)
I dont really think that that would help, so you should explain him about 4th notes 8th, 16th etc. And he has to count...
So I´m not a drum teacher but I hope that will help a little.

Well last week the other guitarist in my band and myself split on a BOSS DR-880. It's the newest version of their "DR." series, and it's pretty fucking cool! So far i've programmed one whole song into it that our drummer couldn't learn, and i'm halfway through a second song.

My drummer recently told me he's planning to move into a house within 1/2 a year, so he'll be bringing his drums there and be able to practice pretty much any time he wants. If this happens, we'll probably keep him. The guy's pretty good, he only has about 2 1/2 years experience and the last year is once a week, but he can still play some Death tunes, Slayer, Despised Icon, we're working on Decapitated and Martyr songs right now. So we'll see what happens......if he still sucks, we can just resort to the DR. to handle the job!

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honnestly. if you cant find a drummer that cant play one fucking beat...well...yeah. if you and your band really wish to make a name for yourselves then i suggest keep looking for a drummer that can lay down. in time you should be able to find someone...but if it comes down to it, i dont think i would choose a drum machine over a shitty drummer so...do what you will with it.

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Thanks for the advice....?

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Hey man im just tellin you how it is...you really dont want to be stuck with a piece of shit drummer but i guess everybody will just do what they want anyway...

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There's new "news" coming from the drummer that might enable him to practice more often. He might be moving into a house and out of his appartment, so he'll have his kit with him. What remains to be seen is if this actually happens or not. He's wanted to do things in the past to better himself with his drums, but after about a week it turns to shit and it's back to same old same old. My band and i will just have to wait and see.

On a lighter note though, we've recorded our first song thanks to the drum machine! It's only on tape (we don't have a digital recorder......yet), and the crash cymbals are surprisingly absent once any guitar is put in the mix, but overall we're very happy with the results. A song that we've been trying to teach our drummer for 6 months finally got recorded and now has a concrete drum track! W00 hoo!

As soon as Father Death (he's the bassist) and I figure out how to convert audio tapes to mp3s, we'll post the song somewhere for your whores to bash and make fun of.

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Where can I download a free drum machine that is worth a damn? I had a program called Hammerhead but it sucked ass.

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I make drum tracks on a program called Tab It for my songs then I record the guitar parts with the drum parts I make and give them to my drummer for reference. Ive tried Fruity Loops and it sounds a hell of a lot better than tab it (since tab it is midi) but the only problem is you cant really do very many time signature changes and tempo changes without creating a completely new file and pasting it into the recording program. You can go here for an example of how the tabit it drums sound www.myspace.com/nefaustium. And if your interested PM me and Ill send you my registration info so you can get the full version.