Drum Machine
From This Might Be A Wiki
The drum machine has been an integral part of recording for They Might Be Giants from the earliest days of the band, particularly on their first four albums, until they adopted a live band for studio recording. John and John still use drum machines and programmed rhythm tracks for demos, some of which occasionally make it into final studio recordings.
Drum Machines and Instruments Used for Percussion[edit]
- Shure SM57 - On some early, pre-drum machine recordings, a kick drum sound was produced by thumping a thumb against the microphone.[1][2] This technique can be heard on "Sally Boy Candy Bar" and the first demo of "Cowtown".
- Moog Micromoog - Also used on some early, pre-drum machine recordings to produce percussive sounds.[3] One example is the earliest demo of "Hell Hotel", which features a snare sound created using the synthesizer's white noise generator, set to a quick attack and slow decay.
- Casiotone MT-65 - This keyboard's preset drum beats were used in some of the earliest Dial-A-Song recordings, including "I'm Gettin' Sentimental Over You" and "How Much Cake Can You Eat?" The instrument appears on the digital cover art for the 2021 compilation Secret Music Vol. 2.
- Boss DR-110 Dr. Rhythm - The band's first drum machine, purchased in late 1983 or 1984.[4] It is featured on several early recordings, including "1999", "Confusing The Mind", "I Need Some Lovin'", "Next Plane To London", the first demo of "Don't Let's Start" and songs on the 1984 Promotional Demo Tape. John Flansburgh wrote about the instrument in a 2009 article for Magnet Magazine:
They came for the kick drum, but they stayed for the hand claps! The DR-110 was an early tool for TMBG. There is nothing real about the sounds that came out of this early "pro-sumer" drum machine, but more singular to the DR-110, there was nothing particularly big sounding about it, either. The graphic display can be tapped into, which put it well past the pre-programmed "accompanist" rhythm boxes that were created for console organ players, and hearing the results of an entirely hypothetical graphical idea turned into a rhythm wasn't usually successful but was still fascinating.
- Mattel Synsonics - Owned by Flansburgh and used for the tom drum sounds on "Happy".[5]
- Oberheim DMX - Borrowed from Chris Butler of The Waitresses for about a month in mid-1984.[6][7] It can be heard on the Wiggle Diskette, as well as in early live recordings and demo tapes. Flansburgh reflected in a 2022 interview:
[Butler] was like, "Listen, I've got a drum machine if you need to borrow a drum machine." This is back when drum machines were, like, $2,500, and John and I were living on falafel and ramen. He just was so generous and so supportive. And he didn't want to produce us, he didn't want to be our friend. He just thought we were doing an interesting project.
- Yamaha RX15 - A scaled-down budget version of the Yamaha RX11, featuring 15 sounds. Flansburgh recalled purchasing the unit on Canal Street through the grey market, possibly as early as fall 1984,[8][9] although its earliest known appearances on recordings date from mid-1985. The band made extensive use of the instrument from 1985 to 1988. Two of the first tracks recorded with it were "Counterfeit Fake"[10] and "Cupid".[11]
- Yamaha RX11 - Owned by Al Houghton's Dubway Studios.[12] Its additional 14 sounds (2 bass drum, 6 snares, and an extra rimshot, hi-hat set, tom, handclap, and cowbell) can be heard on many recordings from 1986 to early 1988, including the band's debut album and the Don't Let's Start EP. It was also used during the initial recording of Lincoln, before being replaced by the Alesis HR-16.
- Alesis HR-16 - A versatile drum machine featuring 49 relatively realistic sampled sounds, each of which could be individually tuned. The band purchased the unit partway through the recording of Lincoln, on the recommendation of Chris Butler.[13] It was heavily used on Lincoln, and to a lesser extent on Flood. In a 2019 Tumblr post, Flansburgh wrote of the instrument:
The sounds of the Alesis were significantly more sophisticated than anything on the market, and the unit offered a lot of mixing versatility. [...] Reflecting on it now, the Alesis actually sonically pulled things BACK from full tilt bone-crushing KAHH! snare sound of the RX15 to either the HR-16s (kind of authentic?) sounding piccolo snare ping or it’s papery white-noisey "brush" snare. Those sounds were simply not available from a drum machine before '88. And while there are production values on the Lincoln album that fully place it squarely in the big 80s, I am grateful that the varied and often smaller sounds of the HR-16 arrived just in time.
- Alesis HR-16-B - A later model of the HR-16 with expanded and different sounds. Owned by Flansburgh, but its use in recordings has not been mentioned or identified.[14]
- Casio FZ-1 - A keyboard-based sampler used on Flood, Apollo 18 and beyond. Both Flansburgh and Linnell purchased their own FZ-1 samplers before work began on Flood, using them to create their own sample libraries.[15] The instrument was notably used to create nearly all of the sounds on "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".
- Roland R-8 - Featured prominently on recordings from 1989 to 1992, serving as the primary drum machine on Flood and Apollo 18.[16] Flansburgh described it in 2018 as "kind of the last of the big drum machine libraries. [...] The sound was much crisper while still often realistic."[17]
- Yamaha MU-5 - A small General MIDI tone generator with a button keyboard. The percussion sounds were used on "Your Own Worst Enemy" and, along with other instrument sounds, on John Linnell's House of Mayors EP.