SpecDrum - Electro Kit

ZX Computing

BEAT THE ELECTRODRUM Cheetah Marketing £4.99 Oh wow! You can forget all that latin rhythm nonsense that Cheetah started with their recent Latin Kit for the SpecDrum, this is what we've been waiting for. The Electro Kit programs eight new drum 'voices' into the SpecDrum and they're all megafunky electronic sounds that should automatically work their way into the minds of anyone this side of rigor mortis. For those of you that don't already own a SpecDrum (there goes your street cred) I suppose that I ought to explain how it works. The package consists of an interface that plugs into the Spectrum and connects, via a phono lead, to your stereo amplifier. Then, once you've loaded the controlling software, the SpecDrum allows you to overcome the Speccy's nonexistent sound chip and produce three-channel drum music. The software comes in two parts; first there's the main music writing program which allows you to create your magnum opus, and then there's the 'Kit'. This is a chunk of code which contains the information used to create the actual sounds that you'll eventually hear, and provides the SpecDrum with a 'kit' of eight different drum sounds. The clever people at Cheetah wrote the SpecDrum software so that this kit could be loaded into the machine separately which allows you to store different sets of drum sounds on cassette and load whichever set you want into the SpecDrum (though there's a limit of just eight sounds that can be used in any one 'kit'). The standard SpecDrum comes equipped with its own kit of voices and the Electro Kit is the latest addition to the range of new kits that Cheetah are committed to producing, and it's got some pretty good sounds in it. The best one is 'PEOW', which sounds just like it reads - a sort of electronic ricochet sound that gets used a lot in break-dancing music. Then there's 'Lo Tom', a thumping deep bass sound that'll get your bedroom floor shaking while the family are watching East Enders downstairs. I also liked 'Claps'. This is a nice gritty clapping noise, the sort of thing that comes in as a loud offbeat in a lot of disco records. Those three are my favourites, but the kit also contains 'Kick', 'Snare', 'Hi Tom', 'Hi Hat, and 'Cymb' sounds that can be added to provide a bit of spice to your music. I must admit that 'till now I've admired the idea behind the SpecDrum but that I've never heard any homemade music on it that would outdo any decent professional recording. But after jamming around on the Electro Kit for just a short while I'm hooked. It seems as if you only have to throw a few notes together to get good results with these sounds, and you certainly don't need to be Michael Jackson to come up with something that's fatally catchy. If you're at all interested in music then it's probably worth buying a SpecDrum just so that you can use the Electro Kit. What more can I say?