Decent drum kits/sfx for accents live.

[wheresgrant3]

I'm in a popular regional cover band that does alot of modern Top 40. David Guetta, Enrique Inglesis, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, LMFAO. We have two keyboard players in our cover band doing a great job at tackling the production behind most of the hits. He usually covers the main riffs of each song which leaves me to pick up the accents and small details present on the recording that most bands can't touch. Whether it's pedal tones, filter sweeps, drum accents even your occasional end of the world 'boom' we're mixing the energy of what a DJ brings along with the raw feel of a live band.

 

We're always working together and swaping out pieces of gear but currently our gear list includes:

 

Korg M3M

Access Virus B

Yamaha Motif Rack

Akai 2000

Korg Micro X (or Triton Extreme depending on size of the gig)

Roland XV5080

V-Synth XT strictly for vocoding.

 

I'm currently looking for another piece of synth gear that would compliment our combined rig. Originally I was looking at a Blofeld, but honestly the Virus and MicroX covers everything we need in terms of leads, stabs and wall of sound noize. The one area I could use help would be decent drum kits. Our current drummer is excellent and has no problems moving between an acoustic kit and sample pads to drive the songs with power. He only has two hands however. I also occasionally provide some drum accents (bongos, toms, and other percussion sound FX). I'm just looking a sound source that would provide excellent sampled percussion and some DJ friendly sound fx. It would really be the icing on the cake. The Micro X has 15 Multi kits set up... the congas are terrible and most of the kits aren't the quality I'm looking for. A great mix of electronic and acoustic percussion would be great. I'm not looking to spend more than $500.

[mpegsucks]

- buy a rack mount sampler, like the Roland Fantom, and create your own performances.

- check out the SRX expansion boards for the 5080: Supreme Dance, Drums, Platinum Trax

 

I dont know of ANY rompler with great drum sounds

[wheresgrant3]

 

- buy a rack mount sampler, like the Roland Fantom, and create your own performances. - check out the SRX expansion boards for the 5080: Supreme Dance, Drums, Platinum Trax I dont know of ANY rompler with great drum sounds

 

 

I already have an XV5080 with Platinum Trax installed. There's nothing that I found that usable. I'll check out the Drums but I'm guessing the Supreme Dance is more of the same (Platinum Trax).

[angstwulf]

+1 on the sampler option. Is the Akai 2000 the drummer's?

 

I'd consider a used MPC1000 - easily under $500 and you can stick in a harddrive, expand the memory and get the JJOS (an aftermarket operating system) and keep it in budget.

 

- you can put in any drum sound you want - you have a good drummer who isn't sample averse - if you build your soundset from his rig then it could sound like your drummer did grow another pair of arms

- you can make your own keyboard accents/sfx's - you can multisample - not well enough for a solo piano maybe but for a 3rd part keyboard sound, sure

- it accepts keyboard and drum controllers well

- 128 MB ram is a lot of time - you can play around with SFX's a whole lot more than with the Akai 2000

 

I'd also consider a Roland SP-404 but less so:

 

-it's a lot easier to play on stage

- the samples are already loaded at startup - 160 locations if I remember

- it's a really good effects box (you can do some good DJ-style mangling live)

- it's cheaper

- but the pads are not velocity sensitive (it will accept velocity data)

- multi-sampling is harder to set up and doesn't work nearly as well