Elegant Drum Machine From Teensy

October 20, 2018 by Bryan Cockfield 7 Comments

Playing the drums is pretty hard, especially for the uncoordinated. Doing four things at the same time, all while keeping an even tempo, isn’t reasonable for most of us. Rather than hiring a drummer for your band who is well versed in this art, though, you might opt instead to outsource this job to a machine instead. It’s cheaper and also less likely to result in spontaneous combustion.

This drum machine is actually a MIDI Euclidean sequencer. Euclidean rhythms are interesting in their own regard, but the basics are that a common denominator between two beats is found in order to automatically generate complicated beats. This particular unit is running on a Teensy 3.5 and consists of four RGB rotary encoders, an SSD1306 LCD, four momentary buttons, and four 16 LED Neopixel rings. Setting each of the dials increases the number of beats for that particular channel, and it can be configured for an almost limitless combination of beats and patterns.

To really get a feel of what’s going on here, it’s worth it to check out the video after the break. MIDI is also a fascinating standard, beyond the fact that it’s one of the few remaining standards created in the 80s that still enjoys active use, it can also be used to build all kinds of interesting instruments like one that whacks wine glasses with mallets or custom synthesizers.

Thanks to [baldpower] for the tip!

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You Can’t Build A Roland TR-808 Because You Don’t Have Faulty Transistors

September 6, 2018 by Mike Szczys 55 Comments

That headline sounds suspect, but it is the most succinct way to explain why the Roland TR-808 drum machine has a very distinct, and difficult to replicate noise circuit. The drum machine was borne of a hack. As the Secret Life of Synthesizers explains, it was a rejected part picked up and characterized by Roland which delivers this unique auditory thumbprint.

Pictured above is the 2SC828-R, and you can still get this part. But it won’t function the same as the parts found in the original 808. The little dab of paint on the top of the transistor indicates that it was a very special subset of those rejected parts (the 2SC828-RNZ). A big batch of rejects were sold to Roland back in the 1970’s — which they then thinned out in a mysterious testing process. What was left went into the noise circuit that gave the 808 its magical sizzle. When the parts ran out, production ended as newer processes didn’t produce the same superbly flawed parts.

This is an incredible story that was highlighted in 808, a documentary premiered at SXSW back in 2015. The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime (and to rent everywhere else) and is certainly worth your time just to grasp how seminal this drum machine has been in hip hop and several other music genres.

For modern product developers, betting your production on a batch of reject parts is just batty. But it was a very different time with a lot fewer components on the market. What worked, worked. You do have to wonder how you stumble upon the correct trait in an obscure batch of reject parts? Looks like we’ll be adding Ikutar Kakehashi’s book I Believe in Music: Life Experiences and Thoughts on the Future of Electronic Music by the Founder of the Roland Corporation to our reading list.

[via EMSL]

808 Drum Machine In An ATTiny 14-Pin Chip

September 28, 2016 by Richard Baguley 16 Comments

You may not know the 808 drum machine, but you have definitely heard it: the original Roland TR-808 was the first programmable drum machine and has been a mainstay of electronic music ever since. Hackers have been building their own versions of this vintage device for years, but this version from do-it-yourself synth builder [Jan Ostman] is quite remarkable.

He’s packed the entire device (called the Drum8 Vintage) into a single ATtiny84 14-pin DIP package, including the samples and eight polyphonic voices, plus old-school analog CV triggers, a global tune and an analog global accent input. That won’t mean a lot to non-musicians, but suffice to say that these are the same inputs that the original TR-808 had that allowed you to do all sorts of interesting stuff to trigger and modify the drum sounds. Plus some extras.

[Jan] is offering the chip itself for $20, and has made a limited edition version that is built into a patch bay panel for that genuine hard-wired look for $99. If you want to go the home-made route and make your own, he’s released the source code and schematics for making your own. You can check out more of [Jan’s] work in this post on making your own open-source instruments from Elliot. Thanks, Jan!

A Robotic 808 Drum Machine

September 18, 2016 by Jenny List 14 Comments

If you spent the 1980s hanging out at your local record store, and you don’t have a hankering for spandex and bouffant rock-god hairstyles, the chances are you’ll have more than a few pieces of electronic music from the period in your collection. The proliferation of electronica during that era came through the arrival of relatively inexpensive mass-market digital polyphonic instruments, edging out the sounds of monophonic analog synthesisers for a subsequent generation to rediscover in a later decade. Individual instrument models became icons and entered the musical vernacular of the day, the Ensoniq Mirage sampling synthesiser, the Yamaha DX7 FM synthesiser, or the Roland TR-808 drum machine.

It is the Roland TR-808 that inspired today’s subject, the MR-808 robotic drum machine, from [Moritz Simon Geist]. A percussion sequencer featuring real instruments all built into a cabinet styled to resemble a huge Roland 808. Originally built as a performance instrument, but since reinvented as a piece of installation artwork that visitors can program for themselves.

There is a comprehensive description of the machine’s design and build on the creator’s website, as well as a more high-level introduction. A significant amount of effort was put in to creating mechanical instruments as close as possible to the Roland sounds, with each instrument being operated by solenoids driven by a MIDI-controlled Arduino Mega. A second Arduino, this time an Uno, controls lighting that follows the instruments.

The interactive part of the installation comes from a sequencer front-end running in a web browser on a Nexus 7 tablet, this appears to be served from a Raspberry Pi which supplies MIDI to the MR-808.

The results can be seen in the video below the break, and judging by the reaction of the audience the machine is rather popular.

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Hackaday Links: November 15, 2015

November 15, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

There are a surprising number of Raspberry Pis being used in industrial equipment. This means the Arduino is left behind, but no longer. There’s your PLCs that use Arduinos.

A few weeks ago, Google introduced a machine intelligence and computer vision technique that made the world look psychedelic. Now, this library is available. On another note, head mounted displays exist, and a sufficiently creative person could mash these two things together into a very, very cool project.

Welcome to Kickstarter! Kickstarter is an uphill battle. People will doubt you because you don’t have a ‘target audience’ or ‘the rights to this franchise’ or ‘any talent whatsoever’, but that’s what crowdfunding is for!

Several years ago, Apple shipped a few million 17″ iMacs with defective displays. They’re still useful computers, though, especially if you can find a replacement LCD. Apple, in all its wisdom, used a weird connector for this LCD. Here’s the adapter board, and this adapter will allow displays running up to 1920×1200.

[Jan] has earned a reputation of building some very cool synths out of single ARM chips. His previous build was a Drumulator and now he’s shrinkified it. He’s put four drum sounds, pitch CV, and audio out on an 8-pin DIP ARM.

YouTube gives you cadmium! [AvE], recently got 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. Apparently, YouTube sends you a terrible belt buckle when you manage to do that. At least he did it without playing video games and screaming.

Hackaday Links: September 20, 2015

September 20, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 26 Comments

Here’s an offer from Intel and the guy behind all of reality TV [Mark Burnett]: win a million dollars for making something. Pitch an idea for wearable electronics to the producers by October 2, and you might be on a reality TV show about building electronics which they’re calling America’s Greatest Makers. With this, Intel is promoting the Curie module a tiny, tiny SoC with Bluetooth, IMU, and DSP functions. We’re of the opinion that a Hackaday reader should win this contest, or at the very least be featured prominently in the show. No, it’s not Junkyard Wars, but it’s still a million dollar prize.

[Jeremy] builds ~~bombs~~ clocks, and he has a Kickstarter for an interesting Nixie clock. Most Nixie tubes have digits, but [Jeremy] is using the IN-9 ‘bar’ tubes for the hour and minute hand.

The Luka EV is a semifinalist for the Hackaday Prize, and a completely open, road legal electric vehicle powered by hub motors. It also looks really, really cool. Now, they’re selling them. It’s €20,000 for a complete car. Did I mention how cool it looks?

Boca Bearings is having a ‘Show Us Your Workshop’ contest, with the best (or should it be worst?) workshop winning tool cabinets, tool kits, a work mat, and calipers.

The EMU Drumulator is a classic drum machine that featured dirty 12-bit drum sounds in ROM. Now, it’s a single chip thanks to [Jan]. He’s done a lot of great work putting synths in single chips, and it’s great to see him move on to classic drum machines.

Offered without comment, here’s a ride through a PCB.

Digitally Controlled Circuit Bending

January 30, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

Circuit bending doesn’t get a lot of respect around some parts of the Internet we frequent, but there is certainly an artistry to it. Case in point is the most incredible circuit bending we’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s soldering wires to seemingly random points on a PCB, but these bend points are digitally controlled, allowing a drum machine to transform between bent crunchiness and a classic 1980s drum machine with just a few presses of a touch screen controller.

All circuit bending must begin with an interesting piece of equipment and for this project, [Charles], the creator of this masterpiece of circuit bending, is using a Roland TR-626, a slightly more modern version of the TR-606, the percussive counterpart of the infamous TB-303. The circuit is bent in the classical fashion – tying signals on the PCB to ground, VCC, or other signals on the board. [Charles] then out does everyone else by connecting these wires to 384 analog switches controlled by an Arduino Mega. Also on the Arduino is a touch screen, and with a slick UI, this old drum machine can be bent digitally, no vast array of toggle switches required.

[Charles] has put up a few videos going over the construction, capabilities, and sound of this touch screen, circuit bent drum machine. It’s an amazing piece of work, and something that raises the bar for every circuit bending mod from this point on.

Thanks [oxygen_addiction] and [Kroaton] for sending this one in.

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