The DrumBrute from Arturia is a serious drum machine and for only £379, it’s pretty darn good value, especially considering it’s analogue. Now, Arturia have come out with a newly voiced smaller sibling, dubbed the DrumBrute Impact.
The new machine combines a new set of tweakable analogue drum sounds, a highly-regarded sequencer, an all-new ‘Color’ layer for sound manipulation, and output bus distortion. And, considering it cost a full £100 less than its forebear, this could be a very interesting solution for the studio and stage. Ten sounds are available via eight performance pads, and they feature a couple of carefully-chosen controls. Arturia describe them as follows:
- KICK: Bass drum with nice attack transients and variable pitch and decay.
- SNARE 1: a big-bodied snare with great, editable snap and decay.
- SNARE 2: a trashy snare with a hint of clap, with adjustable tone and decay.
- TOM HIGH: simple but powerful high tom with sweepable pitch.
- TOM LOW: pants-shaking low tom that can get so low you could use it as a 2nd kick.
- CYMBAL: zingy, metallic crash with adjustable decay.
- COWBELL: a simple but effective percussive cowbell.
- CLOSED HAT: hard-hitting hat with variable tone that also effects the Open Hat.
- OPEN HAT: open up the hat sound with changeable decay with a mute controlled by the Closed Hat.
- FM DRUM: a percussive synth voice with adjustable carrier pitch, decay, FM amount, and mod pitch.
These sounds have been created by Arturia’s sound designers to work together as a cohesive and unique kit. You can tweak these further with the new ‘Color’ layer which generates tonal changes in the drum sounds and can be activated channel by channel, or programmed using the sequencer. You can, for example, add drive to the Kick, change the tone of the Cymbal, max out the pitch envelope of the FM Drum. It’s certainly an intriguing feature and we look forward to hearing how it performs when we review it. Keep your eyes peeled for a review in the magazine soon.
For additional sound sculpting options, the DrumBrute Impact also features a drum-optimized distortion on the output bus, with a simple “gain” knob and an on-off switch.
The sequencer sounds pretty powerful too, featuring a polyrhythmic 64-step, song-capable sequencer supported by a host of easy-to-use performance controls. Add Swing, inject some Randomness, glitch it up with a Step Repeater, quickly spice up patterns with the Roller, add Accents, and even record Unquantized, should you wish.
It doesn’t seem to be short of connections either, with four extra output busses for post-processing or multitracking, Clock in and out to sync with vintage or modular gear, MIDI I/O to sync up with contemporary synths and outboard, and USB for perfect integration with your DAW and the Arturia MCC, which also gives you access to extra customizations behind the scenes.
The DrumBrute Impact will cost $349/299€/£279 and you can expect to see it in shops this August, but if you can’t wait that long, you can pre-order it now.
Find out more about how to use the DrumBrute Impact with Arturia’s own four-part tutorial series covering the creation of sequences, the use of performance controls, its connectivity options, and the sound-shaping parameters available.
