Drum Machine Samples

A while back I made some samples of some drum machines to use on a Novation Circuit. The drum machines were recorded (mostly) dry using Ableton, then exported as 44.1Khz 16-bit wav files and then uploaded into the Circuit using Components. The drum machines sampled were the Yamaha RX5 and RY30, a Roland R8m, an Alesis SR18 and an Akai Miniak. I know this last is not a drum machine, but it does have about 300 drum sounds on it, so it counts!

As the Circuit could only accept up to 64 samples, there are 64 (approx.) samples for each machine, located in their individual folders. You can copy the folders to your TR-8S SD card and install them as complete sets or, if you don’t want to install all files in each folder, copy the files to the root of your card’s SAMPLE directory.

The files are named as to identify the drum machine first, then the drum type followed by their name. The TR-8s only allow displays sample names up to 16 characters so some sample names may be truncated on the display.

In total, there are 324 samples contained the zip, and although they are quite short samples, they will take up 88% of your available memory, if you install them all.

Download HERE.

The file is 13.3M in size. Hope you enjoy:-)

Here are some previews of the RX5, Alesis SR18 and Miniak samples that I did for the Circuit, which will hopefully give you an idea of some of these sounds.

The Yamaha RX5:

Classic 80s Yamaha Drum Machine:

The Alesis SR18:

3rd Generation Alesis machine following on from the HR and SR16, and now with added bass patches and effects. This is only a small selection of sounds from the SR18, but there are 500-odd on the box itself so there may be more to come from this:

Akai Miniak:

Sounds from the Akai Miniak. These are mostly drums:

Akai Rythym Wolf Samples and Kits

Since the TR-8S came out, the Internet has been in pretty much meltdown due to the total and utter silence of the clamour from owners wanting Akai Rythym Wolf samples to use on their TR-8S. Well, you shall suffer no longer as here, you can find a number of samples from the Rythym Wolf and a couple of kits created using those samples.

It probably won’t surprise anyone that due to the (a-hem) iffy source material, these samples may not the best sounds you’ve ever heard (and I did consider totally re-doing them, tho’ for other reasons(1) but I was pretty flabbered once I started adding them to a kit and found that the TR-8S could actually make the Wolf sound pretty damn OK!

So download away, and have a laugh or two:-)

AI_TR8S_Wolf.zip (File is 3.5M once unzipped)

This was done using the Manwolf Kit:

(1) I probably will do these again at some point, just to add a bit of consistancy to the samples, especially when adjusting the cutoff and resonance of the synth samples.

Kawai R50e Samples and Kit

Probably not the most exciting drum machine ever released, the R50e sported 24 drum and instrument (well, some orchestral hits and a couple of basses) and could hold 50 patterns in memory. The drums were 12-bit 32KHz samples and were OK, if a bit cheesy, especially the toms. It also had a couple of effects, delay and flange, plus a gate. The delay is almost useless however. Maybe it’s the ropey one I have, but I don’t hear much difference in the different delays when I select them, so I never bothered sampling them.

What is here are all 24 included instruments recorded raw, then recorded again using the flange settings, and then again using the R50e’s gate function. There’s 73 samples in total, and one kit included in the zip.

Despite its age and the cheesiness of the samples, this actually sounds pretty nice when loaded on the TR-8S, especially the kicks, which really do, er, kick!

AI_TR8S_R50e.zip (File is 1.9M once unzipped)

A short demo of the R50e kit: