Xbase09 Vs Machinedrum

[Khazul]

When I bought the V-Drum kit I had been really only looking for a very cheapo drum kit style controller for the Reason Drum kits - like that cheap Alesis Ion kit for eg.

Then I quickly realised they were crap and went off the idea - I knew about the roland kits and yamaha kits at the time, but thought they were way too expensive for someone who had never even had a go on a drum kit, and I only needed a controller.

Anyway - I was in this shop that had a TD6-KV on demo was curious etc, the guy gave me a quick demo and told me had had only just started to play since he worked in the shop - well I thought he sounded pretty good.

So he leaves me to it - 2 hours later I was still messing with the thing and ending up buying a kit - just something I realy took to. Ive had it for about 9 months now, still havnt had a lesson, dont play ever day either, but I play nearly all my drums on tracks now from 85 bpm slow hip-pop beats upto drum and bass style stuff upto around 140bpm, breaks from 120-135 and a load of other stuff in between. Im still along way off being good enough to play in a band though.

I still havnt quite got the hand of triplets, but the real point I can lay down enough of a groove to use it with only a little tweaking and then layer programmed stuff over it. Its also taught me alot about making really convincing programmed beats as well - I quite like to layer programmed with played - gives a nice rich texture to the end result.

TBH the getting the MD was a toss up between selling the TD6KV and buying a TD12KV or hugely expanding my options for pattern based drums - I figured I have the best of both worlds now as I can use the drum kit to play the MD as well and of course the MD adds a huge pallete of drum sounds and I really missed having my old TR606

If you fancy it - give it a go - its one of the most enjoyable bits of kit I have - sure it takes years to become a good live drummer, but for studio use, most reasonably co-ordinated musicians should be able to get productive quite quickly with it.