Captain Pikant

Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough (Drum Pattern No. 129)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough". This is their big hit that marked the end of the Vince Clarke era before Martin Gore stepped in as the main songwriter. The band famously used a Korg KR-55 to record the song, but from what we can tell it's only the Kick and Snare. For our sound example we made use of our trusty DRM-1 drum synth :)

Oxygene IV Syntakt Presets + Project File

For all you Syntakt users out there here's the promised ZIP file with the Syntakt project from our Oxygene 4 Drum Patterns Explained video as well as all the presets for the individual Mini Pops 7 drum sounds. You can use the Elektron Transfer app to load them into your Syntakt. Have a nice weekend :)

Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene IV

It's about time we tackled this timeless synthesizer classic :) As is so often the case there is more to this drum pattern than first meets the eye (or ear). Join us as we rebuild it from the ground up - including all the required vintage Mini Pops 7 drum sounds - even the Quijada!

Apart from the sounds this pattern features a lot of fun techniques like triplets, tempo multipliers and pat...

Status Update

Hello everyone! We're slowly melting in the heat, but we're very happy that the 909 video is doing so well. And it even made its way to John Tejada, Darude and cEvin Key from Skinny Puppy! That really was the cherry on top :)

We're currently filming the new episode and as you can see from the pictures we already edited some test footage. We're trying out a few ideas to help us visualize s...

Drum Machine 101 - The Book (July Update)

Hello everyone! A new chapter of the Drum Machine 101 book, fresh from the press ;) This time we tackle tempo multipliers, also known as pattern scale, division or speed. We're slowly working our way towards more complex chapters and this one is an essential requirement for other advanced techniques. And it's also directly related to our next video - more about that soon :)

Oh and we've a...

Darude - Sandstorm (Drum Pattern No. 128)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Darude - Sandstorm". We recently featured the pattern in our Short History of the 909 video.

If you want to try out the Megabass Remix samples yourself they can be found here: https:...

Circuit Breaker - Trac-X (Drum Pattern No. 127)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Circuit Breaker - Trac-X". This distortion-fest is an early hardcore techno track by Richie Hawtin. For a sound example check out the Trac-X segment of our Short History of the 909 video.

Difficulty rating: 🐇
2024-07-20 11:09:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Adamski - Killer (Drum Pattern No. 126)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "Adamski - Killer". We recently featured this drum pattern in our new video A Short History of the 909. The additional percussion on the Yamaha RX120 that mimics the iconic bassline is especially interesting!

Difficulty rating: 🐇🐇
2024-07-15 11:32:27 +0000 UTC View Post

A Short History of the 909

Hello everyone, we finally finished our new video!! This is our love letter to the 909, a drum machine whose unique sound influenced entire music genres such as House and Techno. Like our 808 video this is basically 16 short "Drum Patterns Explained" episodes rolled into one - this time with an authentic replica of the machine on which we could show its little quirks and peculiarities.

Th...

John Tejada - Stabilizer (Drum Pattern No. 125)

This is my drum pattern transcription in the style of "John Tejada - Stabilizer". An excellent example of how you can get the most out of a 16 step pattern by strategically muting and unmuting groups of instruments and occasionally changing the Closed Hat decay. This is a really fun technique to create a lot of variations. For the sound example we went through the entire song (including the par...

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 thought...

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 th...

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 pl...

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...

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: 🐇🐇 2024-06-04 09:55:30 +0000 UTC View Post

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: 🐇
2024-05-26 19:12:28 +0000 UTC View Post

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 spec...

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...

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 clea...

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...

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 2024-05-03 11:06:33 +0000 UTC View Post

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 h...

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 D...

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 t...

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 th...

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 ex...

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 ove...

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...

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 machine...