MR10 From Mars - About

Overview

The MR10 is an unassuming powerhouse of a rhythm machine. Sounding something like a more tune-able 808 crossed with a CR-78, it feels like an overlooked missing link in the canon of analog drum machines. Familiar yet still in a class of its own, and almost totally untapped by producers.

Released by Yamaha in 1982 as part of a line of budget producer gear, it is the only analog drum machine they've ever manufactured, and it truly seems to have been released and then forgotten, perhaps due to its somewhat limited functionality. To be frank, it sounds incredible, but this little box is a (fun) pain to use. We wanted to give these awesome drums their time to shine and make them accessible and usable in a way that the original machine never was.

Notes:

MR10 One Shot Tuning:  The Snare, Toms and Cymbals can be tuned on the MR10 (collectively, not separately).  We samples 6 different tunings for each of these, including the Hi Hats and “Combo” hits - which are extrapolated from patterns.
The Bass Drum cannot be tuned - but we provided different colored versions, using saturation, EQ and compression. The numbered bass drums represent these different processed versions.

Color Samples: For both the Individual Hits and the Loops, the color samples were processed through Overstayer Saturator, Summit TPA-200B, DBX 165A, API 2500, API 550b, API 560 and to Otari MTR-12 1/4” Tape

Loops: There are clean and color versions of each loop. All loops were recorded at 100bpm (or as close as we could get to 100, since the MR10 does not have external sync, or exact tempos). We found 100bpm to be the most usable tempo for a variety of styles and genres, as it sounds good sped up, and pretty good slowed down as well.  We also sampled a couple different tunings for some of the more musical patterns.

WAV:

	•	(204) Samples at 24 bit 44.1 kHz 
	•	(138) Individual Hits and (66) Loops
	•	(5) 16x Hit Kits
	•	Normalization and gain changes have been been applied to balance the volumes between drum hits - to balance the Hi Hats to the Kick Drum, for instance. Loudest samples are peaking at -0.5dB.

Naming Conventions:

CH MR10 Color 03

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CH - Drum Voice

Color - Processing (clean or color)

MR10 = Product Name

03 - Version within a group of related samples - in this case the 3rd tuning (we sampled 6 tuning for the MR10)

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Ableton:

This was built with Ableton 9.77, so that it works for Ableton 9 and Ableton 10 users. If you are an Ableton 10 user, you may need to click the small “upgrade” for certain devices if you wish to edit them further. 

	•	(1) Individual Hits Rack ADG, (5) Drum Rack ADGs, and all 66 Loops on 4 Tracks (Clean, Color, Stripped, and Stripped Color)

	•	Macros are as follows:

	Individual Hits:

	⁃	MR10 Pitch: Cycles through each of the 6 tuned samples for this voice
	⁃	Tune: (Bass Drum Only) Ableton’s pitch transpose, with max values of -24 to +24
	⁃	Decay: A combination of Amp Decay and Amp Release
	⁃	Cutoff: Ableton’s filter - set to Low Pass for all hits
	⁃	Clean / Color: Switches between the clean and processed versions for each sample
	⁃	Drive: Controls Drive amount and wet/dry mix of a saturator, with a utility gain reduction
	⁃	Reverb: Ableton’s reverb effect amount, with a saturator before the reverb device
	⁃	Reverb Decay: Ableton’s reverb time
	⁃	Volume: Mapped to Ableton’s Simpler/Sampler volume

	Kits:

	⁃	Tune: Ableton’s pitch transpose, with max values of -48 to +48
	⁃	Decay: A combination of Amp Decay and Amp Release
	⁃	Drive: Controls Drive amount and wet/dry mix of a saturator, with a utility gain reduction
	⁃	Cutoff: Ableton’s filter - set to Low Pass for all hits
	⁃	Comp: Ableton’s Compressor - set to a 10:1 ratio, with the macro controlling the wet/dry mix for parallel compression
	⁃	Reverb: Ableton’s reverb effect amount, with a saturator before the reverb device
	⁃	Reverb Decay: Ableton’s reverb time
	⁃	Volume: Mapped to Ableton’s Simpler/Sampler volume

	•	If you have Sampler, you can right click, convert the simpler to sampler to further edit these presets.

Logic EXS, Kontakt, Reason NN-XT, and SFZ:

	•	Contain (6) Individual Hits presets and (5) 16x hit Kits presets 

Reason Kong, Maschine, Battery:

	•	Contain (5) 16x hit Kits as presets

FL Studio:

	•	Contain (6) Individual Hits as DWP instruments

	•	Contain all (5) 16x hit Kits as FPC drum presets 

MPC 1000 & 2500:

	•	Contains 16 bit .WAV versions of all (5) 16x hit kits - separated into 2 .PGM drum programs.

MPC Live & MPC X:

   •	Contains 24 bit .WAV versions of all (5) 16x hit kits - separated into 2 .XPM drum programs.

MPC Expansion:

   •	Contains 24 bit .WAV versions of all (5) 16x hit kits - separated into 2 .XPM drum programs. Install with Akai MPC Software. 

Support
Contact info@samplesfrommars.com for support