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808 Cube

808cube.com

This is a great example of the different UX demands of pure creative tools. If this were for getting "work" done then it would be an awful interface: it gets in the way of you programming the result you want. However in the world of music, inspiration and serendipity are just as important, if not more so. An awkward-yet-still-fun interface can imprint itself onto the distinctive sound of a device just as much as any of the audio-generating circuits.

The 303, counterpart to the 808, is a famous example of this. Try and program in a preconceived, sensible melody and you'll be tearing out hair out. Bash in a semi random series of button pushes and the thing will produce instant acid techno.

If anybody is wondering, the name refers to the Roland TR808 drum machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_TR-808

Very fun! Now I really want to get a Rubik's TouchCube and port this to it.

EDIT: You could extrapolate this idea to different geometric shapes too, to achieve unconventional time-signiatures. Of course this would also limit/increase the number of of beat samples, too.

Pyramid would be 6/8 or 6/4 with only 4 samples, whereas dodecahedron would be 5/4 or 10/8 with 12 samples. That could be fun. Using the center as a beat as well could give 9/8, 7/8 and 11/8 for pyramid, cube and dodecahedron respectively.

At first I wonderd why nothing happened... then I realized that the frequency of the bass drum sample is just way below the lower cutoff frequency of crappy builtin laptop speakers ... :-)

Can't hear it on my desktop speakers either. A dirtier-sounding bass drum would solve this problem, but I don't know if the 808 has one.

It doesn't.

Disconnect (Chrome privacy plugin) breaks this site completely - need to whitelist it to see what's going on.

Cheers! Was wondering why it was all black!

No one cares.

Pretty harsh for a first comment.

Please read http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hilarious! It's an absurd combination but a surprisingly fun way to munge around with beats.

The 808 instruments sound intrinsically familiar and make the mishmash you get from random play still sound cohesive and coherent. It's an unexpectedly good choice for music toys like this. Gotta love that cowbell

Holy earf*ck. Beware of high volume sounds.

This looks similar to the Rubik's Cube Doodle Google had up yesterday (click cube for interaction):

https://www.google.com/logos/2014/rubiks/rubiks.html

They're both from the Chrome Cube Lab

https://www.chrome.com/cubelab

Ah interesting!

Built from the same Cuber framework. http://stewd.io/w/rubikscube ;)

Really cool! It would be awesome to be able to save as a permalink and be able to share.

Would be even awesomer if it supported MIDI export!

First I was disappointed by a Chrome ad ( http://puu.sh/8THKg.png ) and then that it has nothing to do with Nokia 808 PV.

It's a neat toy though, maybe even useful for education.

Did you just assume it would be related to the Nokia 808?

Wow, a simple idea brilliantly executed. Now i'm just hoping for someone to hack this thing together for real. Would be the most awesome MIDI controller i could imagine :)

I think I need it on my phone to perform live with!

In case anyone else has trouble understanding how to use the TAP button – I had to look at the code to figure it out – you tap twice to set the tempo.

That's exactly how it works - you tap it in the beat you would like and this sets the bpm.

This is used pretty much in electronic instruments or effects (nearly every drum machines or delay has a tap button).

I've used a lot of browser-based drum sequencers, this is addicting.

One of the reasons this is so interesting is that the patterns are interchangeable and recognizable. Switch your bass drum and snare and you have a breakbeat track. Replace your cowbell with hi-hats and the beat starts chugging. The relationship between instruments and patterns is something that normal drum machines could never show you.

I very much love the TR-808 drum synth sound, but I can't use this ... it's too slow!

What's it doing? I'm not even sure if these beats are supposed to sound out of sync because I clicked something wrong, or because the whole thing is running at 3fps.

I just wish I could play with this thing!

This is an early 80s drum machine people, it should run on a 3 year old laptop, right?

(using Firefox 29, Chromium doesn't even display the cube)

Hey everyone. I'm Ray McClure (@RayReadyRay), the developer of the 808 Cube. Happy you are enjoying it! There are a couple Easter eggs in the 808 Cube that I'll release over the next few days. Secret Feature #1- Drag and Drop One-Shot Samples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LVr7ONiCt8

That was awesome! Very enjoyable to play with.

EDIT: I also feel like many people here are looking at this with an unintended lens: it doesn't look like it was meant to be a convenient interface for mixing a specific beat. It's meant to be more Rubik's Cube than mixer, and if you look at it that way it's an entertaining experiment!

Pretty cool execution. However, in terms of usability, a 2D version with each side laid out would be much better, as the 3D cube just adds limitation and hides parts that could otherwise be visible. This would also more easily allow adding new samples, which is hard on a cube. Subdividing the loop would also be neat.

(Note, this is just my take on it - I don't know its real intent, but this is what seemed feasible and fun to me when I tried it out)

To me, the entertaining part was that you couldn't see or use the non-visible sections unless you rotated them into view: that is, unless you altered your original mix.

It makes the Rubik's Cube analogy come together (because without something to force you to vary it, it'd just be freely inputting what you wanted: and at that point, it'd just be a bad mixer interface).

I don't think it was meant to be convenient to use, but instead entertaining and emergent via treating it more like a Rubik's Cube than a mixer.

I honestly had no idea the sections could be rotated like a Rubiks Cube until I read your comment. The cube can be rotated in its entirety by dragging the empty space around it -- as such, you can see and use non-visible sections without altering the drum pattern.

I do not see any cubes and there's no sound using Chromium 34.0.1847.137 under Linux. Firefox works however.

Try disabling privacy plugins (ghostery or disconnect).

my version of chromium is stock, I still don't see or hear anything, and no errors in console either. Maybe it requires chrome?

Looks like you right click on a cubelet to make it active, but in Firefox under Linux that pops up a right-click menu. Double-click would have been a better choice for that functionality.

Left clicking works for me to activate as well.

A rather nice musical tool, lol, loving it. But the shuffle makes it... well... still, nicely done!

Works quite well on iOS, but the page gets dragged around when you try to rotate the cube.

On firefox touching the tempo slider results in tempo being NaN. Apart from that: awsome!!

It says it was built for Chrome. It's really interessting

Fortunately overall it worked pretty well for me in Firefox. Very fun!

Not to get too far OT, but, I like "Built for Chrome" about as much as I liked "Built for Internet Explorer". This is a very cool app. If it needs to be built-for-x, then we all have more work to do.

Works for me on Android however usability is horrible. A decent 2d one would be cool.

Awsome idea :)

(got NaN on tempo ...)

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