Captain Pikant

Behringer RD-8 MKII vs. MKI (+ Roland TR-08)

Hello everyone! Today we finished post-production of the RD-8 MKII comparison video :) We set out to make the ultimate comparison of the MKII and the MKI by using the powers of our stop motion equipment. This allowed us to match the knob positions on both machines with insane precision - something which probably was never done before ;) You might remember the end jam drum pattern from last year (just around the time we pre-ordered the MKII... VERY optimistic on our part as it turned out). We ...

Air - Talisman (Drum Pattern No. 52)

This song was recommended by our patron Binuts. It is from "Moon Safari", a seminal album of the 90's. You should definitely check it out if you haven't heard it yet 😊

Difficulty rating: 🐇
Listen to the original 🎧

Skinny Puppy - Dig It (Drum Pattern No. 51)

Your fellow patron Craig M. suggested Skinny Puppy, so here we go :) Some very interesting patterns, generously drenched in distortion (I didn't go quite as far in the sound sample). The 808 Clap with distortion sounds like it came straight out of hell. The levels of all instruments going into the distortion have to be carefully balanced so they don't drown each other out. The Kick and Snare don't sound like they're from an 808, but I made it an 808-only version anyway :) The pattern contains...

Status update

Hello everyone! The last weeks were a bit rough for us because our production schedule was sabotaged by a quarantine. As you probably have noticed we used the time wisely by transcribing a lot of new drum patterns that we can use in future episodes. We've since continued filming and we're already done with a few scenes of the upcoming "Hi-Hat Humanization" episode. But to our surprise we got a shipping confirmation for the Behringer RD-8 MKII yesterday - a whole nine months after ordering it ...

Radiohead - The Numbers (Drum Pattern No. 50)

I know there are a few Radiohead as well as CR-78 fans among you, so I hope you like this one :) This is of course not the album version, but the "Jonny, Thom & a CR78" version you can find on YouTube (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson). Amazing what can be done with just two guitars and a drum machine!

Difficulty rating: 🐇
Listen to the original 🎧

Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force - Planet Rock (Drum Pattern No. 49)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force - Planet Rock (Drum Pattern No. 49)".

Difficulty rating: 🐇
Listen to the original 🎧

Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Child (Slight Return) (Drum Pattern No. 48)

Our patron TomDread had a very special request... A transcription of patterns used in Jimi Hendrix' Voodoo Child - played on the Vermona DRM1 MkIV :) It was a lot of work, but it was worth it! Funny how some people I showed this to thought it was a hip-hop song from the 90s... The drummer Mitch Mitchell played every part differently so I had to limit myself to a few representative variations that go well with each other. You can create even more variations by swapping out the Hi-Hat, Shaker a...

Hardfloor - Acperience 1 (Drum Pattern No. 47)

Thanks to Barry for requesting this one! Lots of classic Roland machines involved here: 303, 808, 909 and whereever that tambourine came from :)

Difficulty rating: 🐇🐇
Listen to the original 🎧

Timecop1983 - On the Run (Drum Pattern No. 46)

Thanks to our patron aseeon for suggesting this pattern :) Here Timecop1983 frequently uses silence in the drum track, either half a bar before new sections or entirely muted for several bars. The sound set is similar to Michael Sembello's Maniac, mixing LinnDrum and Simmons SDS-V. The tom fill apparently doesn't use individually tuned drums, the pitch is just gradually lowered on the High Tom.

Roland TR-08 / TR-808 Cheat Sheet

We have a Roland TR-08 on loan right now, so we used the opportunity to make a Cheat Sheet for it :) If you get your hands on an original TR-808 you can use this Cheat Sheet as well because the basic operation is practically identical.

We're probably not going to make a review on the TR-08, so here's the bottom line: Minimalistic and puristic, authentic sound, expensive compared to the Behringer RD-8 or the Roland TR-6S, surprisingly heavy with a really good build quality. Battery life ...

Kavinsky - Zenith (Drum Pattern No. 45)

Okay I couldn't leave you hanging there after the previous "pattern", so I took a shot at Kavinsky's newest release "Zenith", which he calls the sequel to "Nightcall". 11 years later, Kavinsky has certainly upped his game (by 3 BPM, 2 kicks and 1 variation to be exact).

This all begs the question: Who would be up for a "Drum Patterns Explained" episode called "Every Synthwave Song Ever"? I guess there would be lots of LinnDrum sounds, Tom fills and gated reverb. And our chiptune band co...

Kavinsky - Nightcall (Drum Pattern No. 44)

I was looking forward to transcribing this one, but to be honest I was a bit shocked how simple the drums are. I remembered that very differently 😂 The noisy synth pads take the role of cymbals and with everything else that's going on I guess it's all this classic synthwave track really needs. And hey we don't need a slowed down version this time.

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

Prince & The Time - 777-9311 (Drum Pattern No. 43)

This is probably my favourite Hi-Hat pattern ever! While the song was written and produced by Prince, the drum beat apparently was a stock pattern on the Linn LM-1 created by David Garibaldi, the drummer for Tower of Power. The track's groovy Hi-Hat programming fooled many into thinking it was played by a live drummer on a real hi-hat. The LM-1's unique way of generating the Hi-Hat signal certainly plays a part in that and we'll take a closer look at it in the upcoming video about "Hi-Hat Hum...

Drum Patterns Explained: The Amen Break + HQ WAV files

Hello everyone! In our newest episode of "Drum Patterns Explained", we take a look at the drum pattern behind the legendary Amen Break, how it works, its little details and what makes it special (including some resampling and slicing). Attached to this post you will find the high quality WAV files mentioned in the video (and the 909 kick we used), in case you want to try some slicing and dicing yourself :)

You can find two transcriptions of the Amen Break on our Patreon: The 2022-01-22 15:43:30 +0000 UTC View Post

The Winstons - Amen Brother (Acoustic Version) (Drum Pattern No. 42)

To prepare for the upcoming "Drum Patterns Explained" episode, I revisited my transcription from last year. While that was an adaptation for basically any drum machine with accents, this new transcription contains more details, requiring at least three different accent or velocity levels, two different snare pitches, a cymbal choke and ideally multisampled acoustic drums.

Difficulty rating: 🐇🐇🐇
2022-01-22 11:01:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Status Update

Hope you're all doing well! We just turned the lights out on our set after a very successful day of filming for the next "Drum Patterns Explained" video 🐇

We collected so much interesting material on humanizing Hi-Hats that it no longer fit into this Drum Patterns Explained episode - so we're dedicating a full length video to it (including a classic Linn LM-1 Hi-Hat drum pattern by Prince).

Thank you for your continued support! We have so much planned for this year and we're ha...

Surfybear Compact Impulse Responses

Hello everyone! Those of you that have been following the Audio Laboratory series might have noticed that we're quite fond of a certain spring reverb pedal. In the episode about "Impulse Responses" we demonstrated how to create an impulse respo...

Teenage Engineering PO-12 rhythm Cheat Sheet

Here's the Cheat Sheet for the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator PO-12 rhythm. As simple as that fun little barebones calculator seems - some functions aren't that obvious. For example it took me way too long to realize that you can fine tune sounds and then place them on the sequencer without live recording parameter automation (it's explained in the troubleshooting section).

What really surprised me was that the manual is plain wrong about the substep divisions (it's 2/3/4/6/8, not ...

Erica Synths Bassline DB-01 Cheat Sheet 1.2 (Firmware 1.08)

Update 2022/01/29: Cheat Sheet updated for firmware version 1.08. New feature "Shift all pattern steps left or right". They fixed the swing bug! Hopefully they will soon address the LFO reset bug in keyboard mode. I added a few helpful pointers for the firmware update procedure.

Well, apparently writing another Cheat Sheet was my idea of relaxing during our month off... Initially I made this for myself to learn all the features, but I thought maybe some of you are inte...

Happy Holidays

Wham! - Last Christmas (Drum Pattern No. 41)

Why not accompany your little cousin who's playing the recorder and torture the whole family with your very own rendition of "Last Christmas"?

You knew this had to be coming, so we might as well get it over with this year ;) It started as a joke (like many of our ideas do), but this is actually an interesting LinnDrum pattern with lots of variation. Just add sleigh bells to taste. And don't worry - there won't be a Drum Patterns Explained episode on this one, we're not that cru...

Holiday Break

Hello everyone!

For the upcoming busy festive season in December we will be taking a short break from the Captain Pikant channel. Patreon will not bill you for December and we will be back with new content in January 2022 - although Beatbunny might bring you a special gift a few days before Christmas ;) 🎁🐇

Have a great time and we hope to see you then!

Captain Pikant & The Intern

Cheat Sheet Roadmap

Hello everyone! The poll on which Drum Machine Cheat Sheet to tackle next has now ended and the results were clear:

Last week we've already taken care of the Arturia DrumBrute Original Cheat Sheet. Because the Pocket Operator PO-12 Cheat Sheet is a lot faster to make we'll fast-track this one. After that we will tak...

Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygène (Part IV) (Drum Pattern No. 40)

Thanks to our Patron Albert Pauw for recommending this one! We finally got to use the Quijada in a transcription ;) I have to admit that this one was a bit harder to crack than I expected...

I know, it's just a single one bar pattern in 1/8 triplets, but the Korg Minipops 7 has a surprising amount of instruments that kind of blend into each other and they're hard to decipher under that carpet of synthesizers. The Minipops 7 is a preset machine and cannot be programmed, but you can press...

Arturia DrumBrute Cheat Sheet

Turns out the Arturia DrumBrute and the DrumBrute Impact share many features, so we could finish this Cheat Sheet much faster than anticipated :)

We hope this will be useful to you. 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. Click here to see a list of all Captain Pikant Cheat Sheets.

Which Drum Machine Cheat Sheets are you interested in?

Hello everyone! Our list of Cheat Sheets has grown quite a bit over the last year 😊 We don't have many drum machines left to make one of, but we're keen to hear which ones you're most interested in.

Please note: As much as we'd love to include more drum machines in the poll, we can only make Cheat Sheets for drum machines we actually have in our studio. We test these Cheat...