Wednesday, January 16, 2008

My first day as a DIY electronica musician.


Finally, via boing-boing, I discover a free way for me to realize my dream of becoming whatever you call a person who makes electronic music. This great link to aM Laboratory lets you tinker with all the knobs on the above virtual, vintage, Roland drum machine. I can't really figure out how to control it much yet. No idea what "decay" means or "shuffle," or what clicking those buttons on the bottom do, but still, I'm making music. Or beats, at least. Best time waster I've found in awhile.

4 comments:

Meg Marie said...

Good luck with that

thechrisproject said...

This is great! I've used a number of TR-909 emulators over the years and haven't seen such a great web-based one yet.

For what it's worth:
Decay is basically how long the sound lasts after it's triggered. A crash cymbal with a long decay will drag out for a second or more. A short delay will end it abruptly. Shuffle is... shuffling the beat. Make a pattern that's got a hi hat hit on every note then adjust the shuffle. You'll immediately hear what's going on.

This is great. Thanks for the link.

Mr. Hill said...

Meg, it doesn't sound like you have as much confidence in me as I think I deserve. I intend to prove you wrong, thanks to the timely help of thechrisproject, above.

Mark Alan said...

HA! When I saw this, it reminded me of Dr. Synthesizer. He's just the guy who draws the cartoons on toothpastefordinner.com. I guess a drum machine and synthesizer aren't exactly the same except they are electronic. The video was kinda...different.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qWJlAtjEOcM