To create this silliness I set the GMS to play the drums on the built in Java Sound Synthesizer. I adjusted the tempo and duration probabilities to something ridiculous then captured the output on my PCM-D50. Since this experiment I have made a few more that are even more high speed and scattered. Perhaps I’ll post more examples of this nature. I have rare instances of longer durations inabled in the probability distribution, so as you’re listening, every so often you may think that it’s over (finally!) when suddenly it starts up again with obnoxiousness.
GMS Drum Solo
I’ve been sampling my Casiotone 403 recently. I have recorded and sampled this instrument in the past, but this time I wanted to gather some of the beats at a slow tempo so that I could play them at many different tempos without hearing artifacts created when time expanding or compressing. This is a loop of the familiar Samba setting. I recorded it at 85 bpm, then cranked the tempo up to 195 bpm and looped it four times before rendering this example.
I programmed this beat and ran it through some pretty thick filtering followed by compression with a touch of delay automated in here and there for a few dub effects. Another technique I used to get some different fills going in the pattern was to add a MIDI arpeggiator and turn it on at certain moments to change the feel. The arpeggiator was programmed to randomize the notes in the sequence using specific note durations. I alternated between eighth notes and thirty-second notes.
So, what do I do with all these samples of different mallets on piano strings, and other areas of the instrument? How about putting them all into a drum machine? Better yet, a virtual drum machine, like