We're glad to be able to report that the future for drum machines seems exceedingly bright. Prices are coming down and specifications are going up, while both professional and amateur musicians continue to intelligently mix their use of real drums and drum machines depending on the job at hand.

Live use of drum machines doesn't seem to have taken off yet, partly because of the loss of the visual element added by a conventional drum kit on stage. But some artists such as Frank Tovey (Fad Gadget) have been putting drum machines on backing tape for some time, and using a percussionist to put back some of the spice in the live situation. That way the poor old drummer doesn't become completely redundant.

In fact drummers are now working with drum machines rather than against them, and the Musicians' Union movement to ban drum machines in studio sessions seems to have ground to a halt in view of their absolute omnipresence (the drum machines — not the Musicians' Union). Even drummers who insist on playing a real kit will often use a drum machine as a backing pattern to play against.

As far as the end user is concerned, the drum machine is becoming smaller, cheaper and more versatile. There are a few exceptions — both the Linn 9000 and the Emulator SP-12 seem unnecessarily bulky — but hopefully the trend of the tiny Korg DDM110 and DDM220 will become dominant. It's so nice to be able to take your drum kit to rehearsals in your back pocket.

PCM sampling is offering an alternative to EPROM recording, and soon the cheap analogue machines will disappear altogether (although the TR808 will probably come into fashion every few years). EPROM blowers will become more common so that drum machine users can sample and store their own sounds, and drum chips will be big business until someone develops a small, cheap and reliable disk loading system which can be interfaced even to budget machines.

MIDI compositional, sound storage and editing packages for drum machines are bound to become more common (at present there's only an RX compositional package for Yamaha's CX5M Music Computer in the UK at least), and the trend started by the Linn 9000 of combining a drum machine and MIDI sequencer will inevitably be taken up soon.

Some time within the next couple of years Casio are going to go for sound sampling in a big way, partially superceding their Phase Distortion system, and their sampled drum machine should set new standards in value for money. Perhaps Simmons have a drum machine up their sleeves too...

Gradually the distinction between sampled drum machines, sampling synths and sequencers will begin to blur, as if already has on the Linn 9000 and Emulator SP-12. In ten years' time we'll see a tiny battery-powered unit the size of a DDM110, equipped with MIDI II (the supercharged version, around ten times as fast as standard MIDI) which can control 32 synthesizers polyphonically and hold around 60 user-sampled sounds which can be saved to a micro bubble memory cartridge.

By that time popular music may well have changed out of all recognition, but there are some constants. Whatever the — music of the future sounds like, it's sure to need the regular back beat that only the drum machine can provide...