Question for the GFY musicians...
 

My roommates birthday is coming up and I would like to buy him a drum machine to play around with, he's in a band but likes to play around on the side with his own music. Where's a good place online to buy music equipment and would would be a decent drum machine to buy him? Nothing "top of the line", but something decent so he can mess around and make some music.

whats the pricerange?

check out musiciansfriend.com, i cant reccomend a drum machine because i dont use one but i know my friends have been happy with the Roland brand.

alesis - they make some awesome drum machines that you can use for jamming alone with, recording or live work.

The Alesis 4 is a very affordable model that he can enjoy forever :)

hey him this, it isn't top of the line, but I guarantee he will have years of fun with it

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW

roland mc-303 groovebox

or this

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW

that is the next roland one they made

the great thing about both those pieces is that they are drum machines and synths in one....you can make entire songs just with them
and the 505 takes memory cards to add more sounds

Is this a decent model? http://www.americanmusical.com/item--i-ALE-SR16.html

Don't really want to spend more than $150-200. I don't really want to spend a ton of money, but at the same time I don't want to be wasting money on absolute crap.

This Alesis model is fine for fairly basic stuff, worth getting if he's semi-serious.
Also very popular are Roland's Dr. Drum products (http://www.rolandus.com/products/sub...d=2&subcatid=0)

Best option is to use software though. If he uses Steinberg's Cubase or most of the Cakewalk products he should already have options to play around with. Another popular one is Fruity Loops which is intended for electronic-type music but you can also get some sweet rock/metal drum settings out of it (with enough patience, that is.)

Hope this helps.