Web developer Kyle Stetz has come up with a completely badass gizmo called “Typedrummer” that allows you to create “ascii beats.” Essentially, it’s the easiest drum sequencer in the world. Drum sounds are assigned to the letter keys of the keyboard. You start typing, and all at once you’re “making beats” effortlessly.

The first thing I typed in was “bad beat,” and I gotta say, it actually wasn’t bad. Try it!

As you learn what sounds are assigned to what keys, you can get creative and do some complex and interesting beats—at least for such a simple tool. I mean, it’s not going to put any drum-machine makers out of business, but it’s certainly a toy that has actual practical real-world uses. For now, you are somewhat limited in what you can do tempo-wise. Adding a parenthesis allows you to do a triplet—hopefully we’ll see the addition of more special features soon!

One unintentional “special feature” is that—at least in Chrome—if you have a beat going and you switch to a different window, the beat goes a bit wonky—which is actually a cool end-result. You can switch windows to create glitchy breakdowns!

One user at “hacker news” at ycombinator.com published this list of “guesses” as to what each key represented on the sound palette:

a: click with a slight rattle, like rattan brushes
b: closed hihat
c: distored synth bass with rattle, like tambourine
d: distored synth bass higher pitch and muted
e: muted synth bass
f: sizzle ride hit like crash
g: maracas
h: muted maracas
i: afuche-cabasa
j: synth snare
k: deeper snare
l: castanets
m/n: tap on closed hihat - maybe striking the hardware?
o: booming tonal bass
p: half muted tonal bass
q: muted bass
r: very muted, blockish bass
s: synth splash
t: agogo bell
u: guiro upstroke
v: guiro downstroke
w: tambourine
x: snare
y: synth snare
z: concert bass
non-alpha: rest
(): beat = 1/3 - note: triplets will begin on the letter before the first open paren, it modifies the space before, not after, each note

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Thanks Kyle Stetz, of the Internet, for giving the world the thing we’ll be doing for the next hour: Typedrummer!

 
I fully realize that my fetish for vintage drum machines is of very specific interest to myself and a small handful of other nerds but I feel that in these two singles from 1967 (!) I’ve found a sort of drum machine holy grail. Evidently Tea Pot (below) was a sizable regional (Chicago) hit for one Simtec Simmons (later of funk duo Simtec & Wylie). If this tune doesn’t qualify as a significant proto-krautrock jam then I dunno what. Endless thanks to Dangerous Minds pal Ian Raikow for pointing me in this direction after my Timmy Thomas post the other day.

 
But what’s truly mind blowing is this following attempted cash-in single by the same guy under the amazing moniker The Computer and the Little Fooler. As they perfectly framed it over at Office Naps, the fantastic (evidently defunct) blog where I found this incredible artifact,

The weirdest post-War American music has always shown up first on the 45 rpm record, one of the most expedient of commercial music media. But, that said, the strange-witted minimalism of “Computing” and its backwards flipside “Sw-w-wis-s-sh” beggars all belief. “Computing” was neither funny nor weird enough to be a novelty record, nor did it offer anything that anyone could point to as a being conventionally instrumental. There’s simply little sense to be made of it. Sometimes I think this is the greatest record ever made.

I must concur ! “Sw-w-wis-s-sh” is the most mysterious piece of vinyl I can recall, bathed as it is in sheets of white noise tape hiss, a skeletal rhythm section peeking through, bass all random. Yeah !