First, the sounds themselves were often not realistic enough to be appropriate for jazz (though, to be fair, this was more an attitude of mind than a valid technical issue). That was certainly true 10 years ago, when drum machines simply didn't have the technical facilities to compete with humans on a jazz tip. Jazz music is supposed to be all about the spontaneous expression of heart and soul, while drum machines and sequencers are soulless machines, the very opposites of spontaneity, creativity and having a good laugh down the boozer after the gig. On the face of it, jazz drum programming appears to be a contradiction in terms. So even if you think that jazz is something musicians only do when they get too old to play music that people actually want to listen to, stay tuned. While the focus of our attention will be jazz patterns, the subtext is all about injecting the milk of human kindness into beat boxes in general. In this month's nail‑biting instalment of The Rhythm Method, we're going to investigate various techniques for making programmed patterns sound more 'human', as well as looking at some short cuts to generating rhythm tracks with an apparently improvised feel. The debate's been going on for as long as drum machines have been around: can they really sound human? Nicholas Rowland takes jazz drumming as his test case and tries to find out.
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