DrumMachine v1 - Drum pattern maker using real drum sounds

[Dav]

DrumMachine v1 is a beat maker prototype for designing drum patterns using real drum samples.  With it you can program beats (limited to 2 bars of 4/4 now).  It uses 16 real drum sounds to make realistic sounding patterns.  The drum patterns can be saved and loaded (it's a file named DRUMMACHINE.SAV).  This version has limited capabilities and was made to see if QB64 can handle many sounds this way, and it looks like it can.  The real drum sound samples were all found in public domain. 

The attached version is new - I fixed a problem with the one that was posted on the old forum - the mouse click no longer delays the playback, so it doesn't stutter anymore.

I'm currently working on version 2 which has more capabilities.

- Dav


  drummachine-01d-src.zip (Size: 267.12 KB / Downloads: 137)

   

[Coolman]

hello. excellent work. you master qb64 perfectly. you have many graphic projects. have you considered creating a gui to facilitate your work. a gui for linux and windows based entirely on the graphic commands of qb64 and totally independent would certainly be very useful to the community.

[bplus]

Thumbs up again! I remember having so much fun with this back at org!

And I thought I could never be a drummer, let alone a drummer composer! ;-))

Everyone, here is a music program from a professional musician!

[Dav]

Thanks ya'll!

@coolman, I haven't thought of making a gui.  Will play around with the idea.

- Dav

[SierraKen]

This is INCREDIBLE!!!! I was a drummer in High School and I've used similar drum machines in the past but this one is really simple to use. Thank you for making this!

[SierraKen]

Dav, I just made you an example for YouTube to show off to the world. I made the beats myself. Tell me what you think, thanks. If you would rather it not be on YouTube, I will delete it. Just thought it would be a great place to show other people the sounds people can make.

YouTube - QB64 Drum Machine by Dav Example May 19 2022

[Dav]

Wow, @SierraKen. I’m honored.  Glad you like it, and thanks for the encouragement. Your pattern sounds good.  

I’m going to get more serious with this program. Here’s what I have planned for version 2. New file save/load that you can save load more than one pattern.  Allow longer than 2 bar patterns, add 3/4 meter, have selectable drum kits, not just the one, so you can choose different drum sounds.  Perhaps have a song page where you can build a song by stacking patterns together.  And have an export to WAV feature so you can save your beat to audio file.  @Petr made a WAV save for this at the old forum, I will ask his permission to incorporate that in the new version.  Also will use higher quality sound files - I used low quality ones here. Small improvements, like making sure the open hi-hat sound is off when the closed hi-hat sounds (like it sounds when a real drummer is playing), and a higher pitched metronome sound on beat 1 of the bar, like other recorder programs do.

- Dav

[SierraKen]

Thanks Dav! Yeah ALL of that would be awesome! You might also want to make the length limit like 20 times longer or more, but add a button to make it loop at any place on the bar. That way someone can make an entire song on it with the drum track. To do that, make the bar slide to a new window from right to left as it leaves the screen. You can place all of the graphics there with it just be off-screen. There's a way to slide the graphic any way you want from off the screen, which I used on my cave shooter game.

[Dav]

Thanks for the suggestion, SierraKen.

By the way, I noticed on your video that all the marked squares on your pattern are marked bright red (loudest).  Just in case you didn't know it, you can click on an already marked square the second time to make that square turn darker red - the result will be that the darker squares will play softer.  This way the drum playing can sound more like a real drummer (but on second thought - I know a lot of drummers that play full blast volume all the time, lol...)

- Dav

[SierraKen]

Hmm I thought the dimmer ones were softer? I did do that on other ones I've made. I've been copying the .sav file and renaming them to keep. Hopefully version 2 will be able to use these? I also noticed that some of the instruments, maybe 1 or 2, don't work for some reason. Or probably because other instruments flood over them. Something you might want to check out. I have been having a blast with this.