NOT NAMM: FunkBox Drum Machine iphone app demo

YouTube via syntheticbits

"Demo of the FunkBox Drum Machine iphone app from Synthetic Bits. FunkBox is a pocket-sized emulation of classic vintage beatboxes, along with all their dirt and quirks. Grab a Funkbox and get busy making yourself some funky beats. Available now from the Apple iTunes iphone app store!"

on iTunes here:


Official Press Release:

"Sometime late last night the FunkBox Drum Machine dropped on the iTunes App Store, bringing some much needed fun and funk to grateful humans across the planet Earth. The latest release from iPhone developers Synthetic Bits, this app brings all the sound, feel and features of a vintage drum machine to your iPhone, without letting the slick iPhone interface detract from the quirky charm of the original boxes blinky lights, clicky buttons, and sticky sliders.

"Putting in all the most useful parts of a classic beatbox was important, but what we really wanted to do was capture the real feel of using these things. They aren't cut and dry and precise - they are quirky, they're dusty, they're funky." says Art Kerns of Synthetic Bits. "Mostly we tried to make something that people could have fun just playing around with, because it can have all the features in the world, but if it isn't fun you'll never actually use it."

The idea for FunkBox came while Art was working on recording a retro-styled electronica album (Submodern's 2009 release "Slowburn") where he used an assortment of old vintage drum machines from the 70's and 80's. Rather than mousing around with the latest drum plugins, or triggering samples from within a modern digital audio sequencer, he sat down and recorded all the beats for the album using those original dusty, finicky, and funky decades-old beat boxes, giving him a new appreciation for their quirky interfaces, classic sounds, and limited but inspiring feature sets. Synthetic Bits' goal in making the FunkBox app was to create something similarly fun, funky, and easy to use.

"It's cool because you don't have to be an electronic musician to enjoy this thing," explains Synthetic Bits' co-founder Chris Kerns. "I didn't have any experience with drum machines and still had a lot of fun messing with the different beats and boxes in there, even if I didn't understand what everything did at first. And then when you're ready, you can also get a little deeper and really tweak things."

FunkBox brings everything you need to make your own dirty, funky beats on your iPhone, anywhere you go. A variety of preset beat patterns, tempo adjustments on the fly, classic drum box sounds, a live mixer, and for those who want to really get in there a classic x0x style drum programming grid. Beat heads everywhere can use the Funkbox to drop dirty beats sampled from Synthetic Bits personal collection of coveted vintage drum machines: the Roland TR-808, Roland TR-909, Roland TR-606, Roland CR-78, Maestro Rhythm King MRK-2 (the drum machine that Sly Stone nicknamed "the Funkbox"), and Korg ER-1. Yep, all the classic beatboxes that were used on all your favorite old school electro, techno, hip hop and synthpop tracks, and that are still being heavily used and namedropped to this day by artists like Beck ("Bangin' like an 808..."), Outkast ("I know y'all wanted that 808..."), the Beastie Boys ("...nothing sounds quite like an 808!"), and others.

"I was just trolling around the iTunes App Store this morning, and realized something was different," observed Chris. "Do you smell that? I think someone just brought the funk."

The FunkBox Drum Machine is available for download in the "music" section of the iTunes App Store today."

TinyRhythm DIY Drumsynthesizer Overview

YouTube via stereoping
"My TinyRhythm is finished. A little tweaking on it. It is a 8 channel Drumsynthesizer triggered by Midi. It can learn the midichannel it listenes to. Has some individual outputs and two triggeroutputs. The mixer-faders have an led which flashes when the channel is triggered. Each channel is based on a Atmel microcontroller and has as few as possible additional electronic parts. Just a proof of concept for personal learning on µControllers.
The simple "one-Transisor"-VCA concept" in some modules and the very simple mixer with accent-input is shamelessly copied from the dr110. For the Accent I added a 'time' parameter which makes the decay of the levelemphasizing much longer."

TinyRhythm DIY Drumsynthesizer Top 4 Instruments

"Some tweaking focused on the first 4 Drumchannels: 1. Bassdrum based on a lookuptable-envelope and a trianglewave, both sent out by PulsWidthModulation with analog VCA behind. 2. full digital Sid-Style-Snaredrum - very simple, just a tiny13 and a dual opAmp. 3. Hihat is alos very digital - besides shofted noise it can also make some spectra generated by 3 digital oscillators. And 4. TomTom, which sounds more than another Bassdrum. Depending on triggerstrength it can make 3 different pitches."

TinyRhythm DIY Drumsynthesizer Bottom 4 Instruments

YouTube via stereoping
"Some tweaking focused on the other 4 of 8 Drumchannels: 5. Clap which can also make some Guirosounds, Its kind of burst generator triggering 2 analog Envelopes, sound source is digital noise or some multioscillator-spectra running through an analog VCA (quite a copy of the dr110-clap but with with digital brain). 6. is Cymbal which can also make some cowbell-sounds. The sound runs through a bandpass which is frequencymodulated by an LDR + an LED. The mode-dial can set sample/hold, LFO with different speeds, envelope up/down with differen speeds and fixed 5V. 7. is the simple but cute analog Maracas/Clave from Vermona ER-9 and last one can make 3 different sounds, based on triggerstrength: Clave (from CR5000) which sounds more like a nice 'bek' than a clave, another Clave (from TR808) with MUCH more parts and at last an "accidently-coming-out-as-another-Noise- Snaredrum"-Rim-Module from 808."

Hataken Interview

Back on March 31, I put up a post on Hataken, a Japanese DJ artist who primarily uses analog synths. At the time, Shane Chisolm, the manager of Don Juan Dracula mentioned Hataken was working on a remix version of DJD's "Take Me Home". Shane asked me if I'd be interested in doing an interview with Hataken, and I thought why not. It would be interesting to hear his perspective on the world of synths as a live DJ artist. The following is the result of that interview. Note, this is a long one. You will want to use page down to scroll through. If it is too long for you, I recommend reading one or two questions each time you visit the site. Each DIY item below would typically have been a separate post. There is a lot of interesting stuff here. That said, I start with an introduction followed by asking Hataken how it all started for him. Note the focus is primarily on synths as this site is about everything synth, and Hataken delivers. The gear he has both worked with and designed to meet his specific needs is overwhelming. There's also an interesting interlude on experimenting with frequency counters to produce specific frequencies of sound known to have healing properties, and of course there is a bit of the age old discussion of digital and analog.

Before we start the interview, I want to thank Hataken for taking the time out for this, and I want to thank Shane for suggesting it. It's a fascinating history of a DJ synth artist with interesting perspectives that I'm sure I will come back to over time. Be sure to check out the video and link to more at the end. And of course be sure to check out Hataken's website.

1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

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EPROM MODS DIY

"Solid Rate Studios is proud to announce it's leap into the world of Eprom Programming! Eproms are programmed in-house from a wide range of source material including binary images taken from stock Eproms, after market Eproms and binaries made from custom samples. We provide Eproms for virtually any Eprom based drum machine including... SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS DRUMTRAKS, LINN LM-1, LINN DRUM, OBERHEIM DMX, OBERHEIM DX, E-MU DRUMULATOR, ELEKTRON MACHINE DRUM, KORG ER-1, ROLAND MC-303, ROLAND TR-909, ROLAND TR-808, ROLAND TR-727, ROLAND TR-707, ROLAND TR-606, ROLAND DDR-30, BOSS DR-202, ALESIS SR-16, ALESIS HR-16, MPC MUSIC PERCUSSION COMPUTER, VARIOUS MODULAR ANALOG DRUM KITS, and more."

Title link takes you there.