Beat morpher

Beat morpher is a sample playback drum machine “with a difference”.
You specify start and end positions for each drum hit, then you can morph between the two patterns using a slider or by just pressing the auto-morph button - the beat will gradually morph over a specified number of bars.
This effect was inspired by the music of Simon Posford aka Hallucinogen and Shpongle (with raja ram).

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Alesis to strengthen their drum line-up

Summer NAMM is up and running with very few real news. One of them is came from the drum factory of Alesis - on the picture you can see the Performance Pad, a decent drum pad controller with built-in high quality sound generator. It has 233 sounds, 100 drum kits and 24-bit output. It has two extra trigger inputs for bass drum and hi-hat pedals, has an external audio input (which is mixed to the output only), and the standard MIDI output of course. Check the product's page.

Rise the size and you will get DM5 Pro Kit, the new pro pad controller kit from Alesis. It is built around the DM5 sound generator and trigger converter, and has a bass drum, a snare, a hi-hat, three tomtoms, plus two cymbals - all electronic of course. Check here if you want to know more.

Drumazon

This 909 emulator is a VST made by the guys at d16. I had my first test drive lately and was ashamed I didn’t do it earlier. Probably the most impressive emulator I heard, ever. For the first time, it makes me question hardware as superior to vst… I now doubt. It is a bit expensive and it has no manual besides a online tutorial, but if you’re into 909’s, this is for you!