My recent illness has poured a little cold water on the delivery of a new piece of musical kit: a Korg Wavedrum. I’ve had a Roland Handsonic for a long while but was interested in this item as it appeared to be more drum than an electronic instrument. It appears to combine mocrophonic input as well as a touch sensitive pad, so you have the best of both worlds and an instrument that is more responsive in a performance sense. So you can tap it, stroke it, scratch it, etc and those actions will be picked up microphonically.
The only downside is that there is no MIDI output or input, so it really is just a live performance instrument and, as with most Korg gear, the operating manual might as well be written in Chinese. There are only six operating buttons and one settings knob, so a lot of the buttons double up. I can’t get my head around programming the thing, so I am just enjoying the presets at the moment. There’s also not as many sounds as the Handsonic, but this is a mere quibble because the sounds you do get a very, very realistic.
Comparing it to the Handsonic is a bit like comparing an apple to an orange: they are both fruit, but completely different. I think they would complement each other though and plan to setup my Handsonic with the Wavedrum and see if I can get some grooves out of them both.
This is something I recorded with the Wavedrum. It is done is two passes as live. The first pass is me on the drum, just vamping along, with the output going through a digital delay pedal and the second pass was a live tracking of my six-string bass. I like it. It goes a bit African in the middle and is sufficiently different to keep me interested. Enjoy!
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