Battle of the Beatmakers

The best drum machines and percussion synths go to war

“THINGS HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE SOMEWHAT”

The evolution of hardware drum machines has played a vital role in shaping electronic music as we know it today. They’ve provided the literal pulse of numerous genres, forming the robotic beats behind Kraftwerk’s early electronic pop experiments, driving the synthesised funk of classic house and techno, and providing the bass-heavy kicks and metallic hi-hat trills that define the sound of modern rap.

Various styles of drum machine have come in and out of fashion over the years. The earliest designs were simplistic and limited, often designed to replace a real drummer in a backing track but misused to wonderful effect by early electronic pioneers. In the ’80s and ’90s, advances in sampling and digital technology led those early designs to fall out of fashion in favour of workstations, samplers and – eventually – software.

It would be a misnomer to say those early drum machines ever really went away though; the sound of Roland’s TR-808 and TR-909 in particular have remained at the heart of club music and hip-hop over the near four decades since they were released. Even as the original machines started to generate eye-watering prices on the second hand market, their sounds have made their way into modern studios through sample packs, emulations and modern hardware recreations.

As with hardware synths, things have come full circle somewhat. Hardware drum machines have become more affordable and common once again over the past decade, from budget analogue, through sample players up to complex top-end percussion synths.

Why buy a hardware drum machine in 2021?

As with almost all forms of music making hardware, die-hard in-the-box musicians might tell you there’s nothing you can do with hardware that you can’t do more easily with a plugin. There’s some truth to that argument; through sampling, synthesis and emulation software, drum machines can do anything their real world counterparts can, and often offer a multitude of conveniences, such as flexible save/recall, adaptable routing and simple sample upload.

There remains, however, something special about creating with hardware. In part, that comes down to interaction – punching beats into a sequencer, finger-drumming pads and tweaking hardware knobs still offers a feeling of raw, hands-on creativity that can be difficult to replicate in software.

Dyed in the wool hardware heads will tell you there’s something distinctive and special about the sound too. You could get lost in an endless debate about the sonic qualities of an original 808 against any of its many emulations, or the various merits of vintage analogue versus modern digital, but the process of sequencing and recording a real-world instrument creates subtle, but distinctive effects. In part, this comes down to noise – even the most hi-fi recording setup will impart subtle touch of noise or character absent when working entirely in the digital realm. Timing plays a role too – although modern USB and MIDI sync is tighter than the all-analogue setups of the past, subtle variations in timing and swing can still lend an overall looser feel to hardware-created grooves.

But why is now a good time to pick up a hardware drum machine? Like in the synth realm, the past decade has seen a boom in new – largely affordable – hardware. From top-end machines to compact instruments that barely break the £100 barrier, there’s more choice now than ever. Whether you want something to replicate vintage hardware or something more contemporary or unique, it’s a buyer’s market right now.

Selecting our contenders

This issue, we’re putting a crop of our favourite beatmakers head-tohead, in an effort to find the best of the best. Given the broad wealth of instruments out there to choose from, we’ve put some restriction on ourselves. We’re only including gear that is currently widely available first hand, so no vintage or discontinued machines. We’ve limited ourselves to one drum machine from each brand too, meaning some excellent instruments have been muscled out in favour of their stronger siblings – Elektron’s Model:Cycles/Samples are absent, for example, in favour of the flagship Analog Rytm. We’ve tried to stick fairly strictly to pure drum machines too, passing over samplers such as Digitakt, multi-function grooveboxes like Novation Circuit, standalone gear such as the MPCs or Maschine+ as well as the entire realm of Eurorack beatmakers.

We’ve picked gear from every part of the price spectrum – from £1000+ hardware to wallet-friendly instruments, setting a lower limit of £100, meaning we’ve left out Teenage Engineering’s fun, but slightly limited Pocket Operators. Since it wouldn’t be fair to compare every drum machine directly – obviously the £1300 Rytm is going to be better equipped than the

£150 UNO Drum – we’ll judge each on its own merits, how it performs for its price, and how well it fits its brief. Let the battle of the beatmakers commence!