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I once played in a band that gigged using an old drum machine. The good news is it was cheap, simple, everyone learned to follow the drummer and could keep to the beat. I was impressed. The bad news was it sounded awful, unrealistic, void of any feeling or dynamics.
I worked for a while in a trio (vocals / guitar / bass) where we had the drums (MIDI / Superior Drummer) as backing tracks. I used to put the drum tracks together in my home studio either starting with free files from the internet, occasionally buying a file or sometimes rolling my own. I'd re-arrange according to our needs then I'd export the result as a wav. The wav was always - drums (mono) panned right, click / count-in hard left. I'd play back from an iPad (using SoundCue app) with RH going to FOH and monitor, LH monitor only.
It works but everybody has to know the tracks. The backing never goes wrong, never comes in too fast or too slow but neither does it compensate for your mistakes. If somebody comes in too late then it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion knowing that the break is going to come in where it should be but too soon for the vocals.
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Advantages of a drum machine;
Doesn't hit on your girlfriend
Gets in the same number of rounds (zero) but drinks less
You only have to punch the rhythm in once
I played in a band where the bandleader had meticulously programmed a drum machine so it sounded pretty realistic, and we played live with it - once. It was a three-song showcase gig, either luckily or unluckily...
In one of the songs (the second I think), the humans screwed up and missed the cue going into the middle eight, and by the time we'd sorted it out we were two bars behind. We knew what was going to happen of course, like an impending car crash in slow motion... the drum machine launched into the pounding transition back into the final choruses right on time, with the rest of us flailing around trying to work out how to close the gap without it sounding like too much of a mess - utter chaos of course.
And that is the first and last time I have ever played live with a machine .
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
Well, we thought we had . We'd practiced it enough... it's just that with a real drummer, he/she would have been listening to the lyrics and been able to correct it. The drum machine of course paid no attention whatsoever and dumped the problem right back onto the puny humans .
I believe more modern drum machines may have more advanced programmability that allow you to footswitch some functions, such as inserting an extra repeat or something... but I've never really had the desire to find out.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson