Captain Pikant

Roland TR-8S Cheat Sheet

We had the chance to loan a TR-8S for a few days especially to make a Cheat Sheet :) This one was frequently requested, so we hope it's useful to you!

We won't be making a review on it because basically everything said in our TR-6S review also applies to its bigger sibling. As an addendum to that here are my thoughts on the topic TR-8S vs. TR-6S:

Advantages TR-8S

• 11 instead of 6 tracks

  2024-06-25 13:31:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Status Update

Just a very short update: Filming started this week and many scenes are already finished. Post-Production should start later next week and we're so excited for you to see the final video :) :)

Oh and for all of you TR-8S users: We finally have one in our studio and we're going to make a Cheat Sheet!

Have a great weekend everybody!

Peggy Gou - I Go (Drum Pattern No. 124)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Peggy Gou - I Go". According to her the song is a tribute to the 90s club music she listened to while growing up in Korea. And it really shows - it's one of the rare instances of a mainly 909 driven drum track in recent memory.

There is also a tiny bit of help from the 707/727 and the missing Hi-Hat choking might be an indicator of the track not using an actual 909 (or it means the Closed Hats were recorded separately).

Diffic...

Roland TR-909 Cheat Sheet

The Steda SR-909 is finally here and of course I made a Cheat Sheet for it :) Just like the DinSync RE-909 it is a faithful replica of the Roland TR-909 so the Cheat Sheet can be used interchangeably for all these machines.

Creating the Cheat Sheet was an excellent preparation for the upcoming video and frankly I learned a few things that I didn't know about the 909 workflow. Some were pleasantly surprising (you can create permanent pattern chains that are also used in song mode), some ...

Status Update

The good news: We put all of our energy into the next video and we're ready to film!

The bad news: We can't film the video yet...

As you might have guessed our upcoming video will be a new entry in our "Drum Machine History" series :) We have prepared a nice script with a whopping 16 patterns as well as some cool trivia and history tidbits. And the kicker: We got somebody to loan us a Steda SR-909 replica with which we can show the authentic workflow of the machine!

Unfortun...

Technotronic - Pump Up The Jam (Drum Pattern No. 123)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of Belgian Techno anthem "Technotronic - Pump Up The Jam". We already covered its basic Hi-Hat pattern in Every Eurodance Song Ever, but there's more finesse to it. Apart from the 909 its siblings the 808 and 707 are involved as well :)

Difficulty rating: 🐇🐇
Listen to the original �...

Inner City - Big Fun (Drum Pattern No. 122)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Inner City - Big Fun". Inner City's Kevin Saunderson is one of the "Belleville Three". Along with Juan Atkins (Cybotron) and Derrick May (Rhythim is Rhythim) he was one of the originators of the Detroit Techno sound, for which the 909 was a key ingredient.

Difficulty rating: 🐇
Listen to the original 🎧

Do you have a Yamaha RX120 drum machine?

Update: Mission accomplished :)

Hello everyone :) We wanted to reach out to all of you to ask if anybody happens to have a Yamaha RX120 drum machine. We're preparing a segment for the new video in which its sounds are used, but we still need to verify some things.

So if you have a functioning RX120 on hand and you'd like to test something for us (ideally send a specific MIDI sequence through it and record the output) then please write us a private message here on ...

Mantronix - Bassline (Drum Pattern No. 121)

Update 2024/06/03: Minor corrections in the Accent lane

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Mantronix - Bassline". While the TR-808 is the drum machine most closely associated with hip hop, this beat features its successor the TR-909. With shuffle and flam Kurtis Mantronik used two of its new functions to give this classic hip hop track a very different sound.

Difficulty rating: 🐇🐇
2024-05-19 10:19:40 +0000 UTC View Post

Status Update

Hello everyone! We're working on a big video right now for which we're transcribing a lot of new patterns, but also double checking existing ones. We've already silently updated a few transcriptions over the last weeks (nothing major, just very small changes), but here's one that deserves special attention:

We actually got hold of the original drum stem of Björk's Hunter. Having the clean drums without any other instruments allowed me to better transcribe what's happening, especially i...

Drum Machine 101 - The Book (May Update)

Hello everyone! Today we have a brand new book chapter ready for you :) This time it's about "Pattern Length". It covers the very basics necessary for breaking away from 1-bar patterns, but also explains how the pattern length affects the time signature of a beat (we plan to go into even more detail in a dedicated chapter in the future). Have a great weekend!

If anything should be unclear, if you find an error or you feel like something is missing just drop us a line - either here in th...

The Beach Boys - Do It Again, Air - Remember (Drum Pattern No. 120)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "The Beach Boys - Do It Again" and "Air - Remember". The sound of that Beach Boys drum loop was so futuristic that Air sampled it almost 30 year later and it didn't feel out of place on a modern production :) You can see us adding the robotic delay effect using retrigs in our Digitakt II video. We added the sound example in a clean and retrigged version.

Diffi...

Logic - Wake Up (Drum Pattern No. 119)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Logic - Wake Up". As so often our sound example uses TR-808 sounds, but you can substite those with more modern samples like we did in our Digitakt II video :) The specialty of this pattern is the collective shifting of all Closed Hats. Try this for yourself and see how it affects your drum patterns.

Difficulty rating: 🐇🐇
2024-04-28 07:34:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Elektron Digitakt II Cheat Sheet

Update 2024/06/28: Firmware 1.02, snap note pitches

Update 2024/06/26: Perform kit mode, Euclidean sequencer, Auto-preview samples, MIDI tracks, Multi-sampling (velocity layers)

Here's our Cheat Sheet for the Elektron Digitakt II :) Too many things to list have changed, but we tested all the features and adapted the new terminologies that were introduced with the DT2 (sound locks are now called preset locks for example).

We hope this will be useful to you. ...

Surprise: A video about the Digitakt 2

Hello everyone! Now that the Digitakt 2 has officially launched we can finally talk about our new video 😅 Elektron asked us a while ago if we would like to test drive their new machine. And since the original Digitakt was a staple in many of our videos and we like it very much, we of course said yes :) This video is not a complete review, but rather a field report with our findings as long time users of the original.

We also used the opportunity to talk about some Elektron sequencer ...

Tool - Rosetta Stoned (Drum Pattern No. 118)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Tool - Rosetta Stoned". This is just a very small excerpt which we've used a few times in our videos already to demonstrate the polymeter capabilities of a drum machine. And we'll use it again in the upcoming video... If you know of any other interesting polymeter or polyrhythm drum patterns let us know or we'll keep using this one until the end of time ;)

Difficulty rating: 🐇🐇
2024-04-22 06:04:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Status Update

Hello everyone! There's been a bit of radio silence because we've actually spent all of our time in the studio filming a new video :) We're now in the post-production phase and it will be released next week already! Maybe even earlier than Friday this time... We don't know how this keeps happening, but we aimed for a healthy 20 minutes and it seems we're getting closer to 30 - lots of little experiments we didn't want to cut out ;)

We're also revving up for 2024-04-16 10:19:30 +0000 UTC View Post

100.000!!!

Hello everyone!

Earlier today we made it to 100.000 subscribers on YouTube!!! (insert airhorn noises) And we totally didn't sit there and kept refreshing the browser page ;) It's been a wild ride these last few years and we're still overwhelmed that so many of you share our love for drum machines, synths, bright colours, nonsense and stop motion - despite our constant overuse of the 808 cowbell ;) We're glad you're with us on this journey! Thanks to all of you we can ke...

Drum Machine 101 - The Book (March Update)

Hello everyone! Here's the updated book with the brand new chapter "Swing / Shuffle" :) It's the perfect companion to our new Drum Machine 101 episode on the same topic.

If anything should be unclear, if you find an error or you feel like something is missing just drop us a line - either here in the comments or via PM. ...

Drum Machine 101 Episode 4: Swing

Hello everyone! We're happy to announce the release of the fourth Drum Machine 101 episode :) This time we tackle a subject that is often treated as a magic ingredient and not always fully understood. In this video, we explore swing in both an intuitive and technical way so there's no more doubt what that swing/shuffle control actually does - and why it behaves so differently on various machines and DAWs (the TR-6S/TR-8S shuffle values can downright puzzle you).

And Beatbunny arrives ju...