Wow with all the mistakes made on my order from Zzounds.com my new Boss DR-3 Drum machine arrived today I've been playing with it for the last hour and all I can say folks is DAMN! This drum machine is incredible!

Serioiusly guys and the few gals here this drum machine had to of been designed with the arranger keyboard player in mind. The drum patterns are all triggered as they would be on an arranger keyboard. Each of the preset styles has an intro/ending, 3 variations and 3 fill ins. They are all triggered the same way as on an arranger keyboard. All the fills, mains, intro/ending having buttons on the face panel to trigger in real time. Plus the bass sounds are pretty damn good! Not to mention the drums are Roland (I've always liked their drums). There are just so many features on this drum machine.

Folks this one is worth checking out! I'd really encourage any arranger keyboard player who is used to triggering drums in the way you do on an arranger keyboard to check this thing out. It's an awsome machine. I paid $214.00 for the machine and the adapter (adapter was about $15 extra)

Squeak

Why would a person with an arranger KB ( which has drums already contained in the system) require an external drum machine??

The only reason I can think of is if their drum/bass tracks on the KB are not of good quality. And if a standard instrument like the drums are not of adequate sound/style quality I would venture a guess that the rest of the sounds are sub-standard. Maybe a new KB is a better idea.

Regards;
BN

Congratulation Squeak on your new toy.
I am not familiar with drum machines, although we did have a discussion a while back. Questions:
1) Can you record your own drum patterns using touch pads?
2) How many patterns can be saved in all?
3) Does it record it as a MIDI file?
4) Is there some way of copying to disk, usb, or onto your Casio, Alesis ?
5) What do you mean by bass? bass drum or bass guitar?
6) If it's a bass guitar, how does the bass part know what chord is being played?
I'm not dumb, just ignorant on drum machines.
Starkeeper

[This message has been edited by Starkeeper (edited 03-02-2005).]

BlkNotes,
Drum machine can replace the drums on any keyboard that aren't really up to par with its acoutic and electronic sets. A good example is Yamaha. Even the PSR-2100 had the old dated Yamaha drum kits. This drum machine I got really puts Yammies to shame (from the PSR-2100 down) I would even venture to say it can probably hang with Yammies "live" kits on their keyboards. I'm not sure, but I think they upgraded a few kits with the PSR-3000.

Also quite a few people here use drum machines and even have good arrangers. Drum machines are just a nice little unit to have. They really have a lot of their own flavor too. This drum machine was only $200, and it also includes some bass sounds as well. Programing drum and bass patterns on this machine is similiar to an arranger.

Starkeeper,
Yes you can record the patterns in either step or realtime with the pads. You can also record the drums and bass sounds using an external midi keyboard Big plus there!

It will save 100 user patterns

Don't think it records as a midi file.

This machines memeory is contained to the unit only. However there are some drum machines with smart media card storage

By bass sounds I mean Bass Guitars

The bass parts aren't triggered like an arranger. You select a part the dial in the key and voila

Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 03-02-2005).]

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 03-02-2005).]

So can this be played live? In the sales pitch, it says a guitarist might use it to jam. So you key in all the chords before hand like band-in-a-box?
Starkeeper

Way cool! Gotta love Boss, they make some excellent gear! I love their stuff! My guitarist uses all Boss pedals and guitar workstation thinger and they are way awesome!

Phil

Starkeeper,
Both the drum kits and the bass sounds can be played live. The drum pad positioning makes it really easy to peck out drum beats, and when you switch to the bass sounds it's the same way.

If you're recording with a preset drum style and you want to do it in realtime, you can record this exactly the same way as you would the drum track on an arranger keyboard. Recording bass is a little different. You record your basic bass pattern, and you manually set the key before hand. It's not hard at all, and is much easier to do than explain

In all I'm very happy with this drum machine. The sounds of those kits is amazing! Even the bass sounds are good. The upright acoustic bass is really good. You tap the pad lightly and you get the tap of the string, and you hit the pad harder and hold it and you get the tap followed by the bass note itself. Very expressive.

Squeak

Squeak,

Used to own the DR-3 (still wish I had it!) and thought it was one of the best deals out there. Great simple interface, extremely useable sounds and fx, and loved the fact that I could use a Digitech 3 button foot pedal (the same one used for their Harmony processors) to trigger drum\bass progressions in realtime. For the money, there's nothing else that even comes close. You're going to find it one of the best musical tool investments you've ever made. If I can't figure out the drum stuff on the Fantom S, I may just buy another one myself!

Michael

ocomain,
I have to agree with you in that this drum machine has to be one of the best ones out there in terms of sound quality and ease of use One huge plus is the ability to record in realtime using a midi keyboard. It really makes it much easier when recording bass lines too. This is a great unit. This one's a keeper for sure. I'm happy I got it today. Luckily for me UPS actually said it was their mistake it was held up and made sure it got delivered to me today

Squeak

GOOD FOR YOU SQUEAK!!

I made a similar decision based on the same reasons you describe here. I bought the Roland TD 6v ($495) because even the best Yamaha drums (I've got a Tyros) don't compare with some of the others out there. It is one of my most important pieces of gear and I have no regrets!

Chony