Serious competition for the Linn at half the price: We test this claim in a 'double-barrelled' review by John Webb and Mark Jenkins — it'll blow your mind!

Over the last two years or so the digital drum machine has become almost as common as an acoustic drum kit in modern music, particularly in the pop charts. When costs go up, bands try to set themselves up as small, efficient units, and the digital drum machine offers considerable savings over setting up acoustic kits and wasting valuable studio time.

There are disadvantages however, mainly connected with the loss of spontaneity and "live sound" which drum machines can produce. On the whole, the idea of synthetic drum tracks is not particularly appealing, either live or on record, with a resulting loss of natural "feel" in the music. However, the MXR Drum Computer is a surprisingly versatile and "warm" sounding machine, which if used properly need not be just another rhythm box.

Facts And Figures

The MXR weighs about 11 lbs and is housed in an attractive case with a solid finish and good construction, giving an overall impression of toughness and good workmanship. The buttons and slide controls are well-fitted and positioned in a logical manner. At the back of the computer there are 12 jack sockets to take out the individual drum voices, two sockets for connection to an amplifier (with pre-panned stereo), two sockets for connection to a tape recorder and two multiway connectors. One of these is to allow expansion of the computer, and the other for connection to an additional computer. The main panel has a LED to the left with buttons numbered 0-9 below it. The 12 drum voices are controlled via a set of larger buttons to the right. There are 14 slide controls across the top.

The drum voice buttons are only large enough for one finger, and so complicated fills and rolls must be recorded at slow tempos and the tempo returned to that required when the track is needed — but more about recording later.

There are nine "kit" buttons and three accessory buttons set out in a 4 x 3 array based around the conventional positioning of drums, that is, snare and bass drum central and everything else working outwards from these two. In columns from left to right we have: tom-tom 1, open hi-hat, closed hi-hat; then tom-tom 2, snare, bass; crash cymbal, tom-tom 3, rim shot; and claps, wood block, cowbell.

All of the voices, with the exception of the crash cymbal, provide excellent realism because the drum voices are the sounds of real percussion digitally recorded in a studio and stored in the memory of the machine. The crash cymbal fails, because rather than cutting through with a short decay it has a long decay which doesn't fade out naturally but is cut off, so the end result is much like the sound of a sizzle cymbal hit hard and then dampened after a second or two. However, it must be borne in mind that a cymbal produces a sound of immense complexity, full of harmonics and high frequency resonances. Indeed, to produce this sound requires several PROMs, rather than a single chip as used with the other voices. The memory devices used in the Drum Computer are the 8247 from Mostek and the 8224 (AMD).

Each drum voice apart from the two hi-hat sounds, has its own slide volume control (the hi-hats are premixed into one output). The three remaining sliders control tempo, pitch and the volume of the click track (metronome). The tempo and pitch controls are masters.

Voice Control

There are 16 operational buttons connected to the display. Some of the more esoteric are: Length — this determines the number of beats in a pattern and can vary from one to 99; Accuracy — allows the user to determine the level of the recording accuracy from ¾ beats to 1/32 triplets; Shift — this has four settings (0-3) allowing a "swing" in the click track and a natural (slight) variation in the tempo giving a feel to the beat; Pressing Tempo causes the number of beats per minute to be displayed.

Finally, Accent increases the loudness of the voices at selected beats. The step forward and step backward act as "to tape" and "from tape" buttons respectively when the tape button is pushed, allowing data to be sent to or taken from an external tape recorder via the tape jack socket.

Building Patterns

It is remarkably easy to build up a very exciting pattern. After selecting an empty pattern location (one with length zero), the length required is punched in and the tempo set. With the record button set and click track audible, the rhythm is tapped out using one, two, three or four voices (depending how dexterous you are) at a time. The rhythm will be recorded and repeated once the number of beats at which the length is set have been played, thereafter different voices or rhythms can be added simply by tapping the appropriate buttons. Any unwanted voice can be removed by pressing the erase button and voice at the same time. Whole patterns can be erased by setting the length to zero.

A "song" is built by finding an unused song number and inserting patterns in order — a pattern may be repeated as often as required. Once recorded, the patterns and songs are held in the memory even when the computer is disconnected, since the machine contains a special lithium battery with a life of up to five years.

A pattern can be copied into any other empty location, which is particularly useful for building up during a chorus for instance. Suppose a 4-pattern chorus is needed; one basic beat can be used throughout by copying it onto three other patterns, and then overdubs can be made to accent and intensify parts of the chorus.

The MXR, like most of the other digital drum machines on the market, transcends the limitations of a simple rhythm box because of these song chaining facilities. Rather than simply providing a repetitive backing, the MXR can be regarded as a versatile rhythm composer which can provide an interesting and musical contribution throughout a song. Its tape dump facilities mean that entire tracks can be saved and reproduced, edited or modified at any time.

The design (and price — around £1400) of the drum computer means it is aimed primarily at studios where it can be used to provide a demo drum track for a session drummer, or where the song does not require a complicated beat, to provide the final track. In the latter case though, the nature of the cymbal sound will necessitate the use of "live" cymbals.

Having said that, the MXR also provides great opportunities for the "live" drummer to be free on stage or in the studio to play more complicated drum parts. This style of percussion playing seems to be in vogue at the moment, with bands such as The Thompson Twins and Fad Gadget laying acoustic percussion over a digital backing both live and in the studio. Luckily this means that the 'acoustic percussionist' won't be put out of work for some time yet, although obviously it would be a good idea to become familiar with the range of digital drum machines on the market. The MXR is a worthy addition to this range.