Modern music making technology has evolved to the point where it’s hard to distinguish between real drums and their virtual counterparts. However, even with the advances in samplers and VIs, sometimes a drum machine is just what a track needs. Here are 8 banging tracks where the drum machine is the star.
Boys of Summer - Don Henley
Written by Henley and Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, it’s a great example of the Linn Drum in use. In fact, as was the case with those using drum machines in the early days, the song is a result of them experimenting with the drum machine. Although the song is filled with reverberant guitars and big synths, the drum machine is a strong force in the track.
Of particular note are the rhythms of the side stick and the clap at the start, which bring a syncopation to an otherwise simple pop drum pattern. It’s highly unlikely the stick and clap rhythm would have otherwise been created using a conventional drummer, they lend themselves to the beauty of grid based patterns.
During the middle 8 there’s some nice hi-hat programming and during the lead the tambourine joins the complex rhythm part. It’s a great example of how some imaginative drum programming can bring real interest to a song.
Tainted Love - Soft Cell
British band Soft Cell took the 1964 Gloria Jones track and breathed new life into it during the synth pop revolution in the 1980s. The actual machine used on this track is not entirely clear, although some suggest it was a Roland CR68, forerunner to the CR78, complimented by a Synare, an early drum synth.
Speaking to Mix Magazine in 2019, Mike Thorne talks about working on the track:
“In Studio Two at Central London’s Advision—with a 32-channel Quad Eight console and an MCI 24-track tape machine—Thorne set up with engineer Paul Hardiman to record the drums first. The drum machine they brought in was broken, so Thorne borrowed a Roland from singer Kit Hain, with whom he was also working at the time.
“It was a little box with one output, and we recorded down to two tracks: kick and snare,” he explains. “Paul Hardiman, the engineer, simply EQ’d them so the kick had more low end on it and the snare was brought up in the midrange, which was just for our convenience in mixing so we didn’t have to fiddle around with EQ the whole time. We could just push the fader.”
In retrospect, Thorne acknowledges that this pop-synth track made with just two guys and mostly sampled sounds was pretty cutting-edge for the time. After the drums were laid down, they recorded the bass with Ball’s Korg and then the piano sound from a New England Digital Synclavier.”
Given the simplicity of the drum part it has a strong groove to it as the almost comical snare drops hard on 2 and 4. There’s nothing remarkable about the drum groove, however it does the job of keeping the song bouncing along.
In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins
Often used an example of gated drums, this seminal Collins track, is driven along by the simple Roland CR78 drum pattern. Collins created the pattern by modifying the Disco 2 preset. This included muting the snare and programming a new kick part. The machine was then effected using slapback and a plate.
The simple rhythm sits perfectly under the guitar and keyboard parts, helping to drive along the haunting soundscape. Even before the explosion of toms later on in the track, the rhythm brings a sense of expectation, as understatement goes it’s simply brilliant.
In an interview with Mix magazine, Collins explained that he wrote this song after returning from a tour. Said Collins: "I got back to find that I had a lot of time on my hands because the family wasn't there, I rang up and said, 'Can I have my drum machine?' because I had to start writing some of this music that was inside me.
Face Value was all written over a period of a year-and-a-half, and some songs were written overnight. 'In the Air Tonight' was just a drum machine pattern that I took off that CR78 drum machine. You could eliminate certain sounds and program bass drums and snare drums, so I programmed a bass drum part into it, but basically the rest of it was already on there. I probably added an acoustic Fender piano pretty early.
It’s also worth nothing that Collins is a drummer, at that time at the top of his game, yet he appreciates how a drum machine can add something to a track that perhaps a regular drummer can’t. He doesn’t see it as an threat to his skill, but as something that used in the right context can really help make a song.
I Can’t Go For That - Hall & Oates
Of all the tracks in this list, this Hall & Oates classic shows just how groovy a drum machine can be.
What’s even more astounding is that it’s using the very first preset Rock 1from the machine. Then it’s fed through some effects to give it that crunchy room sound. If you listen carefully, you’ll notice that although this is a drum ‘computer’ that the tempo deviates - these early drum machines (unintentionally) put pay to any notion that drum machines were robotic!
The machine is then joined by some cool keyboard parts, courtesy of a Prophet 5 (often mistaken for an electric piano) and a really groovy funky guitar. The production of the track is perfection, with the CR78 driving it along all the way until the end.
According to Songfacts;
“After a recording session for the Private Eyes album in Electric Lady Studios (New York City), Hall, Oates and engineer Neil Kernon improvised this song. In an interview with Mix Magazine, Daryl Hall recalls: "Remember the old Roland CompuRhythm box? I turned to the Rock and Roll 1 preset, sat down at a Korg organ that happened to be lying there and started to play this bass line that was coming to me. It's the old recording studio story: The engineer heard what I was doing and turned on the tape machine. Good thing, because I'm the kind of person who will come up with an idea and forget it. The chords came together in about 10 minutes, and then I heard a guitar riff, which I asked John, who was sitting in the booth, to play."
John Oates continues in the same interview: "Daryl came up with this great bass line, using whatever sound happened to be on the organ, and Neil miked it and the drum machine. Daryl came up with the 'B' section chords, and then I plugged my 1958 Strat directly into the board, which was either an early SSL or a Trident."
Blue Monday - New Order
If any track demonstrates the unique place of a drum machine, then it’s Blue Monday by Salford’s finest, New order. The scale of the track in pop culture is easy to underestimate, yet according to Far Out;
‘Blue Monday’ remains the highest-selling 12″ single of all time in the UK, and following its release, the song astonishingly spent 186 consecutive weeks in the chart.”
The drum machine is often mistaken for a Linn Drum, it is in fact the Oberheim DMX. Starting with the machine gun kick drums, then joined by hat and snare, the rhythm has become legendary in pop culture, making the track easy to recognise from the first couple of bars.
It’s worth noting, that like Phil Collins, New Order’s Stephen Morris is himself a drummer. He took an early interest in drum machines and using them on both Joy Division and New Order tracks, combining them with regular drum parts.
A little bit of pop trivia, the song uses a sample of Kraftwerk's "Uranium".
When Doves Cry - Prince
It was hard to choose a Prince track to highlight his use of drum machines, in particular the Linn Drum LM1, Prince is considered one of the great drum programmers of his generation. From a considerable list we selected When Doves Cry, as it shows some excellent programming skills.
According to Songfacts; “To make the sound, Prince used a recording of a cross-stick snare drum, where you hold the tip onto the drum head and slap the stick against the rim of the drum. He then tuned it down an octave to give it more of a knocking sound, and ran it through a guitar processor.”
The start-stop nature of the rhythm adds to the energy. Given it’s a drum machine there’s a serious amount of power and drive coming from the combination of the pattern and the sound.
In an interview with The Current, Roger Linn, inventor of the Linn Drum singled out this track as his favourite;
“Do you have a favorite beat that he made using the LM-1?
Well, there were so many. "When Doves Cry" was very nice. It started out with the LM-1, playing the beat on that, and how he had a guitar processor called a flanger, altering the sound of the drum machine. So it would sort of sweep up and down in tone. The record being so stark and so sparse of instruments, it was pretty much just him singing and the drum machine. And then, occasionally, his guitar would come, and there was some other instruments, but there wasn't so much more.”
Another interesting fact is that Bobby Z, drummer at the time for Prince was concerned that the Linn Drum would put him out of a job. Prince had an interface designed so that Bobby Z could play the Linn Drum live.
Heart of Glass - Blondie
This track is not entirely drum machine, but when combined with the real kit it takes the song to a new place. Using a Roland CR78 for the basic rhythm and also to drive a synth bass, it made Heart of Glass a dance classic, produced by what was obstensibly a pop/rock band.
In an interview with The Guardian, Blondie’s Chris Stein said of production;
“Recording with Mike [Chapman] was fun, if a little painstaking – we had to do things over and over. But Jimmy [Destri, keyboards] had a lot to do with how the record sounds, too. Although the song eventually became its own thing, at first he wanted it to sound like a Kraftwerk number.
It was Jimmy who brought in the drum machine and a synthesiser. Synchronising them was a big deal at the time. It all had to be done manually, with every note and beat played in real time rather than looped over. And on old disco tracks, the bass drum was always recorded separately, so Clem had to pound away on a foot-pedal for three hours until they got a take they were happy with.”
Check out the video below to hear both the track in a very different form, sans the influence of any drum machine, but also listen to just how much the rhythm of the Roland CR78 adds to the drum track. In fact, once you’ve heard it, it’s hard to imagine the track without it.
There’s also an excellent documentary about the making of the entire album with a different perspective about the track from producer Mike Chapman. The Heart of Glass part starts around 38 minutes in.
Sexual Healing - Marvin Gaye
Claimed by some as the first hit to use the Roland TR808, Sexual Healing shows just how sexy a drum machine can be when used in the right song.
Running at 94bpm, this drum pattern takes full advantage of the sounds available on the TR808, in particular the clap and clave. Check out the video from Dr Mix below showing how to create the pattern, it’s more complicated than one may first think. As pointed out in the video, the use of accents in the part on the 4th of the bar can lead one to think the pattern is in an odd time sign. However the song is in 4/4.
In very much the same way as the drum machine used in I Can’t Go For That, the drum machine used in this track is front and centre of production throughout the song.
Summary
Sometimes maligned, the above examples show just how useful the trusty old drum machine can be in music production. There were many more examples that could have made it into this article, including Family Affair by Sly & The Family Stone, Rent by the Pet Shop Boys, and Paul Revere by the Beastie Boys.
The art of drumming and skill of a drummer is to be respected, but there’s no getting away from the fact that sometimes a drum machine adds a unique edge to a song.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments, and remember, we’re looking for tracks where it’s obviously a drum machine.