Anatomy of a Drum Machine (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Anatomy of a Drum Machine (2012)

mickeydelp.com

68 pointsbrudgers18 comments

Not directly related, but a singer from a death metal band I was playing in has once had an idea: a death metal drum machine.

In essence, it would be a box with a crank that would produce a blast beat whose tempo would be proportional to the speed of cranking. Something like a blast beat music box.

Deaht metal drum machine has a very power metal vibe to it, ironically enough :D

See 4:00 in this video for punk music:

Explaining Deleuze with drum machines

https://youtu.be/iDVKrbM5MIQ

Ha! I thought of doing the same with a motor driving a cam shaft hooked to a foot pedal with a potentiometer - the harder you press the faster the blast beat. Also thought of clutches or stops to change pattern or instruments.

Perfect setup for a one-man death metal band - just add guitar and mic. Kinda like Joe Buck Yourself or Pandiscordian Necrogenesis.

Can be made digitally by using a stepper motor wired as generator with a hand crank, then picking up the spikes which are proportional to the rotation speed and feed them to a ucontroller with some sound samples in memory arranged ad a rhythm, then play them according with the detected speed.

A simpler one could use the uC only to output MIDI clock data, then a start when the player starts cranking or reaches a certain minimum speed, and a stop when it stops or slows below a given lower limit.

if you're into synths and drum machines, check https://www.gasnewsletter.com/ for studio tours and interviews.

Disclosure: I operate it :)

Ah, that’s very cool content! I’d love to subscribe via RSS though, because I want to read at my own leisure without getting my inbox spammed. :/

"This app is experiencing high traffic and was unable to process this latest request. Please try again in a moment."

Hug of death

woops

it's ok, my synthesizer GAS (and retro computing GAS) has been taking a backseat to ski gear GAS for the last few years, and the last thing I need is for it to resurrect. I haven't lust-scrolled matrixsynth in years now, I really need to not start up again :-)

It's really cool to see DIY drum machines and synths both in hardware like this and in software with dedicated SoCs that people are programming. This is finally the future we were promised in the 1980s.

Proud ISLA Instruments S2400 owner here!

How do you like it?

Love it - it's become a valuable part of my workflow, is built like a tank, and sounds great!

Check out Easy Mo Bee on Instagram. He still has the floppies for songs he did in the 90s and it's really cool watching him playing those on the drum machine he made them on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyb34p-k_OM

that's cool

I love watching artists like this mind melding with their hardware. You can see all that muscle memory from years of loving what they do. Drum machines are instruments too!

great work.

meanwhile, we have

https://www.superbooth.com/en/

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