Forget what you know about drum machines. You’re about to open up a browser tab and listen to a drum machine made with a bouncing DVD logo, or a game of Minesweeper, or seismic data, De Bruijn sequences, or pics of cats and boots. Okay, it’s fairly short of 10k — they’re at 48 so far — but if this is your first time, you’d better plan on not getting any more work done today anyway.
Sleng Ten Drum Modulator – Raphaël Bastide
All of this started this year, as creator Maxwell Neely-Cohen decided to turn some old web-based drum machines into reality. (Maxwell is a coder, too, even though he’s perhaps known as a journalist.) “10,000 drum machines” just sounded cool, plus he explains, “In this era of massive web-scraping and slop production, I do like the idea of trying to saturate the web with esoteric musical instruments.”
I couldn’t agree more. Vibe coding? I don’t care for it. Vibe coding stupid Web drum machines? DO IT. Or code them slowly — badly, even. Just make them weird.
Intersymmetric Works | AAA – James Bradbury, Mark Fell, and Rian Treanor.
And some of the list here offer formidable ideas. There are sophisticated entries, like the series by James Bradbury, Mark Fell, and Rian Treanor. There’s a glimpse of a world where drum machines aren’t so focused on western music styles, too. But then, the weirdness and silliness is no less inspiring. It’s hard not to generate some ideas, then grab sounds with OBS or whatever’s handy. (Some do have export or MIDI capabilities.)
Boots And Cats Drum Machine – Maxwell Neely-Cohen, Jessie Char, and May-Li Khoe
From serious to absurd, maybe what these have in common is the joy of creating an experiment, not a product. And much as I love products, it’s great to be liberated from those demands. Tom Whitwell, who was a big inspiration for this site as we ran rival blogs back in the day, embodies what can happen when products, too, are driven by experimentation, with his whole Music Thing line, and there’s one of his in here, too.
Enjoy. And to anyone you owe work on deadline, I’m sorry. I guess.
I’m late to this party, but I do hope this post also encourages you to submit. Let’s all do it. Let’s get to 10,000 — a collective marathon of strange nerdery.
Correction: An earlier draft misstated Maxwell’s coding experience; I misread that he had started coding this year when in fact he had started coding these experiments this year after sketching them out a few years prior. Apologies for the error! Now, keep them coming!