How to Use drum machine in a Sentence

drum machine

noun
  • And a ton of this wall of senses is drum machines.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 13 Feb. 2026
  • There's a looper, tuner, metronome, and drum machine at the ready.
    — Abhimanyu Ghoshal, New Atlas, 23 Jan. 2026
  • Sequencers and drum machines, on the other hand, march in lockstep.
    — Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork, 13 Apr. 2026
  • Then the person across from me added a synth arpeggio on top and another set up a hi-hat sequence using a drum machine.
    — Miguel Otárola, Denver Post, 29 Dec. 2025
  • At their energetic live shows, Short pulls off the gargantuan task of playing guitar, singing, manning the vocoder, drum machines, sequencer and sampler.
    — Audrey Gibbs, Nashville Tennessean, 16 Apr. 2025
  • Scored only by drum machine, a single synth, chimes, and tubular bells, the song’s straightforward tale sounds dramatically magnificent in spite of its spareness.
    — Billie Bugara, Pitchfork, 26 Apr. 2026
  • But Hannett no longer seemed interested in playing the auteur, largely ignoring Reilly to tinker with drum machines instead.
    — Brad Shoup, Pitchfork, 24 Jan. 2026
  • After replacing Jones, Strummer and manager/producer Bernie Rhodes replaced the band with drum machines and synths.
    — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 9 Nov. 2025
  • There’s something unsettling and indelible about it, especially with Keegan DeWitt’s bass-y drum machine kicking in over the cut to credits.
    — Ben Rosenstock, Vulture, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Channel 2 is a dedicated instrument/line input for directly recording of an electric guitar, synthesizer or drum machine.
    — Mark Sparrow, Forbes.com, 28 May 2026
  • The 40-year-old singer Ryan Davis, a cowboy wiseacre with a drum machine and the patience for 11-minute anthems, riffs merrily on such existential mysteries.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Mighty Bay has tears in his eyes from laughing so hard at the funky drum machine beats of Keith LeBlanc’s Major Malfunction, coming around to it by the final track.
    — Alphonse Pierre, Pitchfork, 17 Oct. 2025
  • But drum machines and synthesizers began replacing live instrumentation.
    — Chris Almeida, New Yorker, 31 Aug. 2025
  • When Landowner started in 2015 as a solo endeavor, Shaw would open a new file, choose a drum machine pattern, and write a caricature of a hardcore song sans distortion.
    — Nina Corcoran, Pitchfork, 24 Mar. 2026
  • Alongside partner Kevin McKillop, the titular Moose in early ’90s shoegaze progenitor group of the same name, Berenyi sketched out dream-pop reductions aided by drum machine.
    — Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 2 Dec. 2025
  • Little details impossible to see even from the front row — fingers triggering thunderous beats from a drum machine, the sweat beading on an artist’s forehead — are intercut rhythmically with sweeping wide shots that reveal dramatic lighting schemes and enraptured masses.
    — Andrea Domanick, Los Angeles Times, 26 Apr. 2026
  • In Southhall, 22-year-old Kuljit Bhamra was using the first Roland synthesizer created and a CR-8000 drum machine to make disco and funk beats.
    — Vrinda Jagota, Pitchfork, 27 June 2026
  • While his peers aimed to achieve maximum tension by barking about capitalism over jabbing, if not outright obnoxious, guitars, Shaw scrapped layer after layer—distortion pedals, crash cymbals, eventually the drum machine itself—to crystalize his band’s own sound.
    — Nina Corcoran, Pitchfork, 24 Mar. 2026
  • His music pulls together Tin Pan Alley and 1960s Wall of Sound pop, ticky-tacky drum machines and synths; his storytelling brings a bohemian world into focus through arch aphorisms, dirty jokes and rhymes that scan impeccably.
    — New York Times, 28 Apr. 2026
  • Vivid memories of countless nights spent watching bad cult movies with my childhood friends flooded my mind, accompanied by the energetic drum machine pulses and synthesizer melodies of famed B-movie composer Chuck Cirino’s score for Deathstalker II.
    — Bear McCreary, HollywoodReporter, 7 Nov. 2025
  • Guthrie would later express dissatisfaction with Watts-Russell’s dry production on Garlands, and the band’s Roland TR-808 drum machine sounds less stylish without the cavernous reverb that would become a signature of every subsequent release.
    — Al Shipley, SPIN, 12 May 2026
  • The song co-written by Gaga with Andrew Watt and Henry Walter — and co-produced by the singer, Watt and Cirkut — has a bouncy 1980s electro pop vibe, propelled by funhouse keyboards and bright drum machine beats as Gaga muses about hoofing it to the end.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 3 Sep. 2025
  • In the 1980s, an unprecedented number of Scottish bands became internationally popular, including Orange Juice, Big Country, The Blue Nile, and The Jesus and Mary Chain, who like the Cocteaus would go far with the combination of electric guitars, drum machines, and a ton of reverb.
    — Al Shipley, SPIN, 12 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'drum machine.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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