DRUMBRUTE IMPACT

Punchy, powerful and pleasingly affordable – Arturia’s latest is a winning groovebox. Here’s how to get the most out of it…

MIDI Control Center

One of the best aspects of the Impact is its hands-on programming workflow, so it seems a little counterintuitive to suggest going ‘in the box’ and using a computer instead. That said, Arturia’s MIDI Control Center can be extremely useful when you’re working on a complex pattern and could use a little more visual feedback. For instance, when you’re working on complex polyrhythms, editing in MCC lets you visualise all of your drum channels in a single window, handy for checking out the interplay between patterns of varying length.

Tempo changes

By default, the Impact saves tempo values with Patterns. This can be handy for those using the drum machine as a clock source for live sets, allowing for an easy way to jump to a new tempo when changing songs or sections in your set. This can be overridden though, by holding Shift and hitting Step 15, to engage Global BPM mode. You can now change to any previous saved Pattern without changing the global tempo.

Randomised hats

Add interest to hi-hat patterns by throwing in some randomised open hat hits. Start by programming a 16th note closed hat rhythm. Now add a few open hat hits to your pattern – these will mute the closed hat, adding rhythmic variation to the monotonous rhythm. With open hat still selected, engage the Random rotary’s Current Track mode and raise the Random amount to around 20. Impact will now throw in sporadic, randomised hits from the open hat, adding a little automatic variation to what is an otherwise machine-like groove.

Shift timing

It’s easy to overlook the Impact’s timing shift function, as it shares a control with Shuffle, but it can be a great tool for adding extra ‘feel’ to a groove. With Current Track engaged, hold Shift and use the Shuffle rotary to push the selected track off the grid in either direction. Try, for example, layering up the Impact’s two snares, but pushing one so that it lands slightly behind the other, for a staggered, clap-like effect.