Up until a month ago I was doing drum loops, but after some experimentation I found there are way too many limits with those. I then went the Alesis SR16 route based on the slew of good reviews, plus the price was only $47 on ebay. Making patterns on it was almost instinctive, though I still have not used its song mode yet- I'm just stitching a few multi-pattern parts together in Audacity to make a complete song; generating a click track helps with the timing.

I've been working on something for the past week to test out my new equipment and also determine my best recording workflow, so I'll definitely post something with the SR16 and any other notes/observations.

Mike
http://www.youtube.com/morphballio

I use an old (mid-80's) Roland CR-1000. It has hundreds of pre-programmed beats including a decent "Surf" beat and some Latin beats that work well for Surf Music. Unfortunately, it doesn't have "Wipeout" in it. It has an on/off footswitch and a footswitch for "fills" which are pretty basic. My Bass player and I perform live with it as a duo. We're so dependent on it that I advertized for another one on Craigslist. I now have a backup if the original fails and an electronics tech who can fix anything.

I'd much rather use a live drummer, but volume & space restrictions at several venues prevent it and the pay scale at some discourages it. The plus side is that we are able to play Surf Music at a lot of places where otherwise it would not be heard.
AND........."Roland" doesn't drink, do drugs, or borrow money-always shows up when I do, and isn't married to a stripper.

1st post here, Hi all.

to the OP:
I've struggled with it too, a lot. Been moving little MIDI dots on all kinds of little dusty LCD displays all my life. Never got anywhere with it...:tumbleweed:

And for Surf... Whoaa that's so hard to get it right. Sounds and samples are just a matter of owning a good library nowadays, but Surf drums particularly seem like so much fun to play live- it's all about feel anyway. How do you get that across? Happy, emotional, complex rolls... atmospheric fills... just altering the groove and strength lightly across the whole track...listening to the other players... being just crazy... trying to MEAN something... all that is human, all that is SURF.

Certainly, regular MIDI editing does not come even close.
It can pass for pop, commercial rock, R'n'B... barely. Depends on the engineer's talent, knowledge, experience and above all musicality.
Doesn't hurt to have some nice quality hardware gear too to back all that up.

This is a quest, full of disappointments ,channel routings, lousy user manuals, unbelievably complex GUI's and forum debates. You'll have to research yourself, learn a lot and work your way through it to get adequate results. You can take some drum lessons to educate yourself musically, and to know a drummer's limitations.

I just wanna play my guitar man...

You can always have a drummer (real :wink:) tap it out for you on some pads or MIDI controller... you'd be able to change samples & tweak it later.

If you wanna go the all digital way :evil:, this is a typical setup. The cherry is no 4.- I'm checking out now:

1. Hardware: an dedicated audio interface or sound card of some kind to minimize latency and provide basic audio quality. MIDI controller of some kind. Good fast PC configured correctly. Good monitors.
   
2. A DAW-Digital Audio Workstation software, preferably for both Audio&MIDI (Cakewalk; Cubase; Pro-Tools; Logic; Amplitude; Reaper; Acoustica Mixcraft;... the list goes on). Many have demos, so check out which best suits your workflow and application. A recommended free DAW: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
   

3. A good acoustic drum samples library (random list: BFD2; RealDrums; Superior Drummer; EZ-Drummer; Reason Drum-Kits2; Drumagog; Drum Masters; Addictive Drums; Ocean Way Drums; Steven Slate; Superior Drummer 2; Kontakt; etc.), most are VST instruments which are hosted by your DAW program, also include separate drum samples you can apply anywhere.
   

4. and the NOVELTY part: >>>>>Jamstix 2<<<<< just got to know it, a VST drum humanizer/sequencer/auto-player available at http://www.rayzoon.com/
   Download the demo and play with it till sunshine and then some more...
   

It is a has a very nice and original AI engine, manipulating the drum track according to style, feel, player etc... of course everything is editable to the bone and you can integrate your own templates, but you can just supply JS2 with a basic song structure and it will do the rest. Controlling parameters that are not usually found in drum software renders real funky and original results. It can even auto-jam with audio! (and MIDI of course), all around a given style.
You can then export the MIDI loop to your DAW for further editing and sound management.

It's far from live of course, no experienced ear would mistake that, but with careful tweaking and using quality samples and mixing, it can put a smile on your face
Nice to have program that was developed with the wonderful observation that MAN has 2 hands and 2 legs. What further developments down the road

Oh Yeah: http://www.pgmusic.com/ Band-In-A-Box is not the "Professional" choice audio-wise, but it's cool as an idea starter.

Also recommended on sg101: http://stevesspringysurfdrums.com/default.aspx -very nice surf loops

Hope that helps, cheers.

Stormtiger: That is the same unit I have.. I just can never manage to program the beats properly. I always do it off time and it gets scrambled. Hmm.. any advice on step programming is that advisable?

I think that is my problem.. I have quantizing on.. probably throwing things off. I am okay at tapping real time drums along with my tracks.. but I get slightly off time occasionally and ruin the whole thing.

Ted:
In another post you mentioned Squid Vicious. Don't you have a track on "American Graffiti Revisited"?

elreydlp
Back to Ted's dislike of drum machines:
I appreciate your band loyalty, but our situation is different. We are essentially a duo and add the drummer where the situation permits. Our drummer and bass player are full-time professionals with other bands who started "The Fabulous Woodies" as a "side" project. It is, however, my only project. It must be working, because I am playing my wife-imposed limit of gigs per month, we get asked back, and our tip jar is usually pretty full. At a party I played this weekend, a guy stuffed a $20 in the jar and remarked that he loved this music and didn't think anyone played it any more. Well, now he knows differently.
Since you're out here this weekend, come to the Coyote in Carlsbad & see what you think. I'll dedicate "Tailspin" to you!

I understand your reasoning, and it makes sense for what you are trying to do. And those $20 tips are always great!

Yeah, I do have a lot of loyalty, especially to my drummer, whom I've played with for about 10 years. We write and arrange many of our songs together.

Would love to see you play this weekend, but unfortunately our plans won't allow us to go that far south. Hope it's a great gig, though.

Ted James
Deep Eddy Records http://www.deepeddy.net
The Nematoads http://www.nematoads.com

Have a safe & enjoyable trip.

I've had moderate success with drums from a Roland synth, played manually and not quantized afterwards (so it doesn't sound too mechanic). The bad part is that you have to actually play the entire drum part on a keyboard, and sometimes you have to go back and edit/fix some parts that don't sound quite right -- so it's good for recording but doesn't work for live, real-time playing. Also stock drum sounds in most keyboards tend to be quite bad, but the Roland Studio SRX card has some pretty good drum sounds, including flams and rolls.