Tuesday 25 November 2014

KORG DDD-5 Dynamic Digital Drum Machine

The KORG DDD-5 Dynamic Digital Drum Machine came out in 1987.


The DDD-5 was the little brother of the DDD-1 (which had a sampling option). 
It's another great candidate for circuit bending.
http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/drummachine/DDD5.html
I picked this one up on Ebay for $65.


 There are sadly no individual outputs and the display is not backlit,



What we do have are 14 electronic drum sounds :Bass, Snare, toms, rimshot, closed hi hats, open hi hats, ride, crash, claps, cowbell, tambourine and cabasa.
The sounds are all 12 bit samples. Additional sounds can be added using ROM cards. You can used these cards on the Korg DDD-1.  There are two ROM slots.


The drum sounds  though basic can be edited: tuning and decay.  
The fader gives access to a two octave tuning range. 
By tweaking the sound parameters (pitch and decay) some nice and weird percussion sounds can be achieved easily. There are also Roll and Flam effects.

There are two different modes: Programmable Mode and Preset Mode. The DDD-5 actually came with two interchangeable front panels for both these modes.


It has MIDI and analog tape sync.So you can use it  to sync a midi sequencer to an analog tape machine!!  I might just use this one day.




 This is what the drum looks like with the panel removed.

I've heard that Nine Inch Nails used this drum  at the end of one of their tracks from "the fragile"CD  (Though this is not substantiated).
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For more info on the history of Korg Drum Machines Click Here
   

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