This thing has such a stupid level of control for a) hardware, and b) a drum machine – in one. It’s crazy. The parameter locks are probably the coolest function, which allow you to take a normal step sequencing drum machine and tweak the hell out of any one of the 24 parameters which colour the sound for just that note, or for any note that you want to do it to. Then you can adjust the ‘slide’, which tells it how much to ‘fade’ between the parameter settings on each different note (or the defaults if they haven’t been set on some notes). Then you can apply that slide on any combination of notes that you want to, so some parts of the pattern will blend and other parts will be more severe. It’s just crazy!

You can also get stoopid with swing and accent in a way that a good-ole drum machine just doesn’t permit. The effects sound very nice, the level of control you can get on the kicks is fairly unique in my experience, the muting interface seems like it will be perfect for live performance, and the mode of navigating between banks of patterns is really intuitive. It’s all just so well thought-out and most importantly the resultant sound delivers in every way from raw to crystal-clear.

I’m probably going to try making a few tracks with just the Machinedrum now because the stuff is sounding much different than what I would normally make, I don’t want to get distracted from learning it by trying to finish a song in the way I normally would, I want to get more practice with the live elements of the interface, and mostly I just really want to see what happens!