Programmable Beat Tech Didn't Kill the Flesh-and-Blood Drummer

Full disclosure: I am a drummer. A somewhat lapsed drummer, but a drummer nonetheless, so whatever. For as long as I can remember, I've been told that drum machines are my enemy. That programmable rhythm technologies—robots, or something—would in due time rule me and every last percussionist obsolete.

I still have that Fear, albeit it to a slightly lesser degree. But the Fear nonetheless.

Thing is, I maybe shouldn't. If you look at the trajectory of drum machines you find that cold, unfeeling knobs and keys have not beat the flesh-and-blood drummer. Not by any stretch. (Maybe bassists, but more on that in a minute.) What drum machines have done, if anything, has been to offer drummers and producers alike the ability to create a seemingly infinite palette of beats and sounds, and they've done this by gradually ditching stock beats. By themselves becoming drum sets, as it were.

In the beginning—in this case, 1952—there was the Wurlitzer Sideman. The Sideman, seen above, was arguably the first ever piece of programmed beat gear. It offered electronic versions of popular beats from that era. It was wholly stock.

Then something happened. As time went on, and more (and more sophisticated) drum machines came to market, the thinking behind electronic rhythm gear began trending away from stock beats.

Not to say the Linn LM-1, the Roland 808 and 909, and a host of other drum machines that came out in the 80s completely cut baked-in samples out of the question. But it's this gradual doing away with preset rhythms that strikes Slate's Jack Hamiltion as a true revolution in not only our understanding of and relationship with the drum machine, but in percussion itself.

"In this disappearance we can see drum machines go from responding to musical trends to creating those trends," Hamilton writes in a great review of Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession.

Here's how that arc sounds.

The Linn LM-1 Drum Computer. Introduced in 1980, the LM-1 was the first drum machine to use digital samples of acoustic drums. You might recognize it as the piece of gear that allowed Prince to unleash "When Doves Cry" without a single bass track. (Sorry, bassists?)

The Roland TR-808 and TR-909. Pretty much everything that could ever be said about these two has been said. Released in 1980 and 1984, respectively, the iconic Roland TRs have been behind countless pop hits, to the point that (ugh) Kanye West felt the need to stick (bastardize) the 808 right in the title of his fourth (truly awful) studio album.

A far better example: Remember the brilliant "Psycho Killer" intro to Stop Making Sense? That's not a tinny boombox at all. That's the sound of a TR-808 patched into the mixing board, far out of view.

The Oberheim DMX. Tell me, how does it feel?

The E-mu Drumulator. A real gem. Just ask Steve Albini. He wrote a bunch of Songs About Fucking with an E-mu.

This is by no means exhaustive. But the point here is that all of these machines, preset-free as they are, were designed and played as instruments, as new hits, not replacements, unto drumming itself.

"They’re not faux-drummers," Hamilton writes, "they’re real drum kits."

There's a lot of talk today about about the perils of button mashing. Of just hitting "play." It's a legit concern, and I'll continue sticking it out, favoring a real, live kick and snare and hi-hat over a vintage 808 any day of the week. But guess what? I'm still here, aren't I? Zach fucking Hill, someone way, way beyond my chops, is still here, isn't he? Sounds about right.

@thebanderson