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I got the ER-1 almost a month ago, so I've had some time to get into it. I go back and forth on it over all. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it, but I am also not very into drum machines. I think for a drum machine, it is a great machine.
First of all, it is not a Roland x0x box. It's not trying to be, it never will be, it just happens to have that row of buttons on the bottom. If you by this instead of an x0x or a Jomox, you may be disappointed.
Second of all, it doesn't sound very analog usually. It apparently uses modelling technology, but it's models don't stand up to the models in say, Vaz Modular.
That said, it's a tremendously enjoyable piece of gear. For a lot of people, it makes an awesome toy for $370 or less. It's just plain enjoyable enough to use, without musicallity, that I think a lot of people would just like to have it around to fiddle with. I bring it around on trips and stuff with me. It's so tiny and light, you don't have to worry about and it fits perfectly in my notebook computer case. If only it was battery powered!
As an actual music tool, I sometimes love it and sometimes think it's not so appropriate for me. The interface is so nice and intuitive that it really facilitates creativity, as opposed to standing in it's way. I think Korg made some feature sacrifices in the sake of interface simplicity, but I am starting to see why. Interface is so key in an instrument that it is often more important than having another esoteric feature. It's actually more appropriate to call it a "rhythm synthesizer", as a Korg does, than a drum machine. You can produce some very cool sounds with it (not particularly analogue though) very easily. I especially love the bass sounds. For people who haven't come across one of these yet, lemme tell you the basic idiom of the box: It's got a 16 step/measure sequencer and a pattern can have 4 measures. On each of these steps, you can have sounds from the four "percussion synthesizers" (more later), the audio ins (likewise), and either the clap or crash sample and closed or open HH sample. The samples are pretty straightforward and there is only one for each of those sounds. However, they do respond to the pitch control and they run through the amp section of the perc synthesizer, so a lot of fun is possible with them using the "Motion Sequencing" (more later). All in all, that's a whole lot of polyphony for a drum machine.
The percussion synths are like super simple analog circuits, you have an osc and a pitch modulator of some kind, which can be noise, another wave, random voltage (diff than noise), or a simple decay env. You can adjust the degree of modulation and the "speed" (freq of wave, length of decay time, etc) Knobs like the pitch control are quantized, quite blatantly, so they don't sound like an analog osc's pitch knob at all. They sound really really cool though. From here, each of these goes to the Amp section, which has level, pan, decay time, and a LPF.
The perc synths make some really cool sounds, but not necessarily really cool drum sounds. I haven't been able to get a really satisfying snare sound out of it. I've got slamming kick drums though. Personally, I don't see what a 909's kick has got on this box. you can also just do weird stuff. This part of the machine is really awesome.
The audio ins are a whole nother story. You have two inputs. They go to the audio in pads. From there on out, they function like drums. Instead of a sample, it just plays the audio ins. This goes through the Amp section two, so you can filter it, and adjust decay, pan and level. These are amazing. SO much fun. After you get them set up, you chop up sound like a benihana chef with the step sequencer. It's really fun to just run like a wowing filtered sound into one and a slowly sweeping pitch into the other and then chop them up in your beats. It sounds awesome. I also like to play a guitar riff at the tempo of the beat, loop it in the sample, send it back through the er-1 and have like a super tremolo. This also gives you a host of other options. With a computer or sampler handy, this feature takes on a wealth of possibilities.
The other really neat trick is the motion sequencing. Motion sequencing allows you to record the tweaking of one knob for each part as a part of your sequence. I can't say enough good about this feature. A lot of people have said stuff like, "there's only one per part! That sucks!" First of all, there's like 10 parts. Second of all, what x0x box had *any* motion sequencing? With a real sequencer you could do this on almost any box but as I said before, it's all about interface. With the ER-1, you have a pattern going and your on kick drum, you want to change the pitch over the sequence? You hit motion sequence, record, and then start tweaking. It's that easy. You can sweep the pitch of the high hats, make the bass brighter on accented notes, play basslines with it (I really like to do this with it). It's awesome.
It's also got a couple more gadgets that deserve mention: delay (global only) and ringmod between two perc synths and between one of the perc synths and one of the audio ins. I haven't used the ringmod much. The delay has it's ups and downs. It's global. That's it's down. You can't put delay on just perc synth 2 or anything like that. However, it has two knobs: depth and time. In this special case, motion sequencing can be recorded for both of these. The problem is, it has to be. The delay is really handy when combined with the motion sequencing. Say I have a snare on beats 2 and 4. With motion sequencing, it's really cool to get a really short delay time and keep the level all the way down for the whole pattern except when you get the that snare. Then you crank it for like one beat or a half a beat and then crank it back down. It sounds really cool.
All this comes together to form a really fun tool. It's super easy to use. YOu can be cranking out interesting patterns very quickly. Before I bought it, I played with it for several hours in the store on different days. My ultimate test was about how fast I could get a pattern from my head out into sound and how closely I could get it to match. Getting it out what I currently consider the best of the ER-1's ability is super easy. For me, faster than any other drum machine I've ever used. Matching the sounds in your head is a lot harder because generally, when I think of beats, they include snares. I can't get cool snares from the ER-1. I'm thinking about investigating it's possibilites for triggering my sampler soon. Maybe that will help. On top of this, there's all the other features that I don't always think in terms of, like audio ins. I love the audio ins. I consider the er-1 to be great in that it is a new instrument, and not a reissue or imitation of an old one, all though it takes good ideas from the past (dedicated controls come to mind.) The ER-1 has no menu pages really. It has a few params you can pick through on it's simple LED display, but almost everything is dedicated, even the Write button. That's great. It sounds like nothing else, which I consider good.
Still, despite all of these praises, I've had a very hard time integrating it with my music. I haven't really found a place for it in my music, though I love using it on it's own. THat's why I have reservations about it and don't just say it's great. It's like the first piece of gear I grab when I'm in a fiddling mood. I run it through either a bass or guitar amp, preferably with tubes and the bass sounds crank. I leave it out on my desk all the time. I have it set up so I can patch it into anything or patch anything into it, but it's right next to my DJ mixer so I can scratch over it's beats or run TT output through it.
The problems are as noted by all. Delay is global only. That sucks. No indy outs is an endless annoyance. If it just had that, a lot of the other problems would go away. No way to clear all the stock patterns. Personally I think the shift function should work when the seq is running so that you can clear a part of clear motion while it's running a sequence, which you can't do right now. There's also no way to use a time signature other than 4/4 or 3/4, except of course things where you just set the tempo differently and consider the notes differently, you can't do 5/4 or anything like that though. I don't know why. How hard could that have been to implement? The headphone output is a little on the weak side, but everything seems to be on the weak side when driving my AKG240s. it would be nice to have more motion sequencing available. It would also be nice to have battery power. There is no way to make a cool snare sound.
Summary: a pleasure to use, great interface, cool, new sounds, still a drum box, prone to chica-chaca and weak snares, no indy outs among other things are great annoyance.
Jeb.
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