Can my Roland G6 or FA-06 replace my drum machine for jazz concerts?

[Laserman]

I play concerts of standard jazz and bossa nova tunes. I use an Alesis SR-18 drum machine with 2 foot petals: one for start/stop; one for switching from A to B pattern with a transition of fill. I LOVE THIS DRUM MACHINE, but there are just a handful of jazz and bossa rhythms to choose from and it is not expandable. I end up using the same 2 patterns for a whole concert.

I dream of a drum machine with scads of jazz and bossa patterns i could choose from, but have not found one. i do have a boss dr-880, but the internal patterns are worse and limited than those of the Alesis SR-18. The Boss DR-880 is expandable, but I don't know how.

is there something i could load into my Roland G6 or Roland FA-06 to have the jazz and bossa patterns i crave with the functionality of foot pedals? (i also have a behringer FCB-1010 midi foot pedal controller, but have never used it.) I absolutely do not want to create my own drum patterns on the piano keyboard. jazz and bossa patterns are very nuanced and i am white.

Thanks for your ideas! - John

 

[happyrat1]

Try picking up an Arturia Beatstep pro and use it with your synths to control all sorts of wonderful patterns and syncopations.

I use one to control the synths in my studio and it does does pretty wild beats and basslines.

Very intuitive once you get familiar with the workflow and as standalone hardware sequencers go, it pretty much is the Acme Standard.

Paired up with the drumkits in my Kurzweil, and the voices in my Hydrasynth and Take 5 I can make the damned thing do some pretty amazing stuff.

It really does make fascinating patterns with programmable swing and randomness and tempo and can handle step or live recording and can blend the two to make it sound very much like a live drummer.

AFAIK it's the only truly polytonic sequencer I've seen on the market so far. It controls 16 tracks per 16 songs per 3 individual MIDI channels simultaneously in hardware and can save and load sets from a computer as well.

Probably someone on ebay is already selling sequences for it.

Gary

 

[Laserman]

Thanks Gary, but I am clear that I do not want to generate the rhythms. I can't learn how to do everything from scratch. When someone says sequencer or sampler or even MIDI, i get a headache. I want someone else to capture or program the incredibly intricate patterns of jazz and bossa drums. then put that in a box for me to activate w. pedals while i play. The Alesis SR-18 is great but not expandable. I'm honestly not yet sick of the two patterns i find usable on that thing (out of 500), but I'm getting there.