Just picked up an Alesis SR-18 drum machine for live stuff.
I love the old Yamaha machines I’ve used before, but when you can only have 99 patterns and a given song might need 10 or more, you fill up pretty quickly and if you want to change your set up you end up deleting and reprogramming a lot, and you have no ability to change your set on the fly unless you want to go drums-free.
My list of tracks I’d like to have on tap for live stuff is about 35 songs long, so you can do the math as to why the Yamahas weren’t going to cut it anymore.
And the last couple live performances I did I used pre-printed backing tracks on an iPod, but that has its own disadvantages in that you can’t change the tempos on the fly and again, not much set flexibility unless you have a bunch of varied playlists and you want to go digging through them on stage.
So, back to the drum machine model.
I actually had my eye on a Korg Electribe ESX-1, but while there are a couple within my budget on EBay, I didn’t want to wait the few weeks for it to arrive in the mail, and the brand new one at Long & McQuade was a couple hundred more than I wanted to pay.
So, next best thing I figured was the Alesis, and hey, it came in under budget too.
Now to dig into the manual and spend the next week or so programming in drum parts til my head spins like Linda Blair.
