New Gear Review: Arturia DrumBrute

As the market starts to fill up with analog reproductions and original synths at dirt cheap prices, Arturia continues to set a high bar in terms of sound and affordability. The company has successfully moved from the world of soft-synths into the hardware realm, releasing a string of synths that people love for their ease-of-use and analog sound that is like nothing else on the market.

Although all of their virtual instruments are recreations of hallowed vintage gear, their analog releases have been original, not following the paths of others through this sonic jungle. Now, Arturia has crossed over into the world of analog percussion with the release of the DrumBrute analog drum machine.

The user interface of DrumBrute should feel familiar to those with experience using drum machines. It also offers several unique features that improve workflow and open up new possibilities within the digital realm.

But this isn’t just a rehash of a 40-year-old instrument. Arturia’s designers have taken all the knowledge they’ve gained from their Spark and Analog Factory plug-in/controller combinations and applied that to the workflow of creating beats with an analog machine. The result is a refreshing take on a classic instrument.

Since DrumBrute is an analog drum machine, perhaps the best place to start this review is with an overview of the sounds in the box.

The main question you probably have is: does it sound like a Roland TR-808 or TR-909? Well, not really. But this is a good thing. Does the world really need another 808 or 909 clone? Nope, not these days. It’s time to move beyond 80’s nostalgia, and Arturia are happily leading the charge.

Instead of sounds that you’ve heard a million times before, this machine gives you cool new sounds that will fill up a mix well, and stand out in a world full of samples. Almost every sound has a few control knobs for quickly changing certain parameters (the most common of which is Decay), and a few of the sounds have controls for more than one parameter.

My original intent was to write about some of my favorite sounds within DrumBrute, but as I use it more, I realize that I enjoy almost every sound it has to offer.

Features and Use

After playing with DrumBrute for a few days, what I came to love is just how versatile this machine is. It’s best if you approach the sounds with an open mind, and not worry about following the labeling on the unit so much. Sure, the ”Cymbal” can make a crash cymbal sound, but it can also be adjusted to be so short as to mimic a closed hi hat sound.

Some of my favorite sounds in DrumBrute are the percussion (non-standard drum kit) instruments. The tambourine, shaker, rim shot, congas, and toms are all really well-made percussion sounds that fit seamlessly into any mix, and work within multiple genres of music. Most of them have pitch knobs, and a couple have decay. I do wish the toms would have decay knobs as well, as I enjoy adjusting the decay of my tom drums, but this omission is not a deal breaker.

Although DrumBrute is a bit more difficult to master than most drum machines, the work you put into learning its inner secrets will be well-rewarded in the end. You will need to read the manual!

However, if all you want to do is make beats, then the process is super simple and results are pretty much instant out of the box, but you will be getting only about half of the fun out of this device if that’s all you do.

There are essentially two ways of making beats with DrumBrute (well, three, but I’ll get to the third in a minute), and both will be familiar if you’ve ever used a drum machine.

The first involves programming patterns into a step-sequencer type of layout. There are sixteen buttons across the middle of the instrument, each corresponding to a step of a beat grid (usually this grid will be one bar of sixteenth notes, but you can change each step to represent different subdivisions). Select the drum you want by pushing the correct pad, then push the step buttons to insert that sound into the beat.

The second input method is more akin to playing. Just hit the record button and play the sounds you want to record. DrumBrute will automatically quantize them to the proper place in the beat, and illuminate the lights in the step-sequencing grid.

So far, so good. Nothing out of the norm, but here is where Arturia’s experience begins to come into play.

Normally, recording into a drum machine will automatically result in quantized beats, but DrumBrute has the ability to record unquantized rhythms, which can help give your beats a nice live feel.

Another common aspect of classic drum machines that has been finding its way into their modern counterparts is the Accent feature. Accent will make certain steps of the beat sound louder than the others.

Historically, this Accent is always laid across all the instruments that fall on that step of the grid. For example, if you place an accent on beat 2, then anything that plays on beat 2 will be louder. Not so with DrumBrute. The Accent feature is instrument-dependent, so if you want the accent to be on beat 2 for the snare, but not the hi hat, this is possible to program in. Another cool feature of the Accent capabilities is that when you are playing rhythms in by hand, if you hit a pad harder, DrumBrute will automatically make that an accented step.

Finally, DrumBrute has a couple of cool features which almost no other drum machine has, which are Polyrhythms and Randomness.

Polyrhythms are rhythms that are in a different time signature from the rest of the beat. This is great if you just want the clave to do its own thing around a 4/4 house beat. Randomness will generate random beats, either by instrument or for the kit as a whole. The amount of hits being randomly played can be controlled via the Amount knob. When used sparingly, these two techniques can add real variation and life to your beats. Randomness is especially cool in live applications (but again, please use with caution… unless you’re playing glitchy IDM!).

With DrumBrute’s robust build quality and twelve individual outputs, this unit can be integrated into a live setup without worry, opening up plenty of new possibilities for external processing.

The patterns you record into DrumBrute can be up to 64 steps long, which is plenty, especially since you can link patterns together to form Songs (see more about Songs below). Saving and copying patterns around is super easy. Just hold the SAVE+PATTERN buttons down at the same time and you’re good to go! As long as the machine is on, and you don’t change Banks, your creation will be stored in the internal memory, but you have to make sure you save before you stray too far from the pattern’s home.

Finally, after you’ve made a nice group of patterns that flow well together, put them into a song! Link up to 16 patterns together to create a Song. Songs can inherit the tempo of the patterns, or they can use the Global BPM.

64 Patterns, and 16 Songs… with this much internal memory, it’s hard to think that you’ll run out of room to keep on creating. Plus, you can back up your Patterns and Songs to the computer, but more on that in a bit…

I also must tell you about the filter which Arturia are extremely proud of. It is mentioned a lot in their online literature, and understandably so: having a filter on a drum machine’s outputs is a really unique thing. But after playing with it for a while, I’m not sure I will get that much use out of it, no matter how sweet it sounds. The filter on the output is definitely more of a novelty and less of a necessity for me.

Finally, before we leave the world of DrumBrute’s features, there is one more thing to discuss: the unit has individual outputs for each sound—twelve of them, to be exact. This is a feature which modern drum machines by and large tend to omit, but Arturia have proudly (and smartly) kept. Although they are mini-jack outs (and you’ll have to buy special cables for them), something is better than nothing.

If you really want to get the most out of this beast in a live situation, you can run each and every instrument out to its own effect or channel on a mixer. Of course, this will go over well for studio musicians as well, but I can see this being a really excellent feature to have on stage. For example, if you want your kick to have the crunch that only a distortion pedal can give it, then simply run that one channel out to the pedal of your choice. No need to affect the entire kit.

For a piece this inexpensive, one would be forgiven for thinking corners must have been cut on build quality, but that is not the case here. The unit is sturdy. It feels (and looks) better than Roland’s Aria-series TR-8; nice and heavy, with knobs that feel strong, and pads that seem like they can take a beating, DrumBrute is a device that will live on a stage just as easily as in a studio. Arturia have taken their years of experience making analog keyboards and controllers, and applied all that knowledge into their newest performance instrument.

What, Software?!

This is an analog drum machine. So, why have a section about software? Well, because the software that connects with DrumBrute is functional enough that I think it’s worth knowing about.

Arturia have added DrumBrute into the list of machines that use their proprietary MIDI Control Center software. In case you aren’t aware, this software allows total control over all the internal workings of the instrument, including both the global utilities, and the making of drum patterns.

Yes, you read that last part right.

This is the third method of beat-creation I told you about earlier. Not only can you tap out your beats and program them using the step buttons, but you can also click around in a sequencer on your computer display, as you may be used to in your favorite DAW. Inputting rhythms this way, however, is not completely seamless; there is a lag while the machine gets information from the computer. That said, the lag is not horrible, and if you enjoy programming rhythms on your computer screen over a piece of hardware, you may want to check it out. (But for the record, I think you’d be crazy to choose this input method over the other playing methods available.)

One of my favorite features of the Control Center software is the ability to save and load patterns and songs, both individually and in bulk. This means that you don’t have to worry about losing all your hard beat-making work if something happens to your DrumBrute. But, of course, you won’t let that happen, will you?

Another useful feature of the Control Center software is the ability to see into the guts of the machine and change the global parameters. As you can imagine, an instrument without a menu window will not provide super easy access to the global parameters. You may know the drill: hold the Shift key, then press Pad 2, then turn the Value knob to parameter 3, then hold your breath, and hit Enter.

The back panel of DrumBrute, featuring twelve individual outputs that can be routed to external units for additional processing.

That said, there are certainly areas that include some hoops to jump through in order to change their settings on the hardware (I’m looking at you, metronome subdivisions). This opaque layer disappears when you connect the device to your computer. Everything is right there in front of you and easy to change with the click of the mouse. My recommendation is to connect your DrumBrute to the Arturia MIDI Control Center as soon as you can and go through the settings, altering whatever may improve your workflow.

One last thing about connecting DrumBrute to the computer: as soon as I connected my machine to my iMac and launched the software, a warning greeted me that a newer Firmware version was available (apparently from about a week before the unit was even on the shelves). Although I had some trouble actually getting the device to download the update, Arturia had a nice ”Help” button there, which took me to a website that had all the answers to my problems, and I was able to get things up and running within minutes.

I bring this up because it shows that Arturia is on top of their game with customer support, which should come as no surprise from such a seasoned company.

To Be Critical

As I mentioned above, this is not a drum machine that you can just pick up and master in an hour; you must be prepared to spend some time with the manual if you want to enjoy the full benefits of this wonderful machine.

Although I’m not sure how Arturia could have fixed this, I wish that the pads were bigger. When trying to play the instrument in a live setting, it is easy to hit the wrong pad, or not be able to hit the same pad repeatedly enough because your fingers may get in the way.

Be sure you listen to DrumBrute before you buy. It is not a repeat of the classic samples you’ve heard a bajillion times before. For me, this is a great thing. I love the fact that the sounds are unique and different. But you need to decide for yourself, especially if you’re making house or techno and this is your first drum machine. You have been warned.

My least favorite sounds are probably the snare and the hi hats (although, the more I listen to them, the more they grow on me). This isn’t to say that these sounds are bad… they’re just different from what I was expecting, and when you play with the machine yourself, brace yourself for a very non-classic drum machine experience.

The snare has more of a brushy, airy quality to it, and less of a snappy “PAP!” crack. The hi hats also lack the crispness of the 808, and lean more towards the 909 (full disclosure: personally, I am not really a fan of the hi hats on that machine). After playing with the sounds for a few hours, I found that I love the sound of the open hat when the decay is set really short, so as to function more like a closed hat. But of course this left me with the dilemma of what to use for an open hat. That void can partially be filled by the cymbal, which I would hardly ever use as a proper cymbal anyway.

Summing it Up

If you are a dance music producer, you will definitely want to check out DrumBrute. Its programmability, mixed with its original analog sounds will quickly find a home in most studios. Be forewarned though, that you will probably want to have a good collection of Roland-style drum machine samples in your arsenal, because this will not give you the kick, snare, or hi hats offered on those machines (which in my opinion is just fine).

If you already have another drum machine that you are currently using, I would still check out DrumBrute, because its sounds will complement those of more traditional machines nicely, and programming on it is really fun.

Tony Grund is a musician, producer and DJ who lives in New York. He attended the Royal Academy of Music in London and teaches music production at SAE Institute.

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