For many beat music enthusiasts, investing the time and money into creating a complete bedroom studio is too much of a commitment. While a lot of us enjoy listening to others’ work, delving into production ourselves can be a greatly intimidating task. Fear not, however, as Synthtopia‘s latest creation will have you quickly churning out beats straight from your browser!
Synthtopia is an electronic blog and instrument review site, dedicated to providing information on all corners of the “electronica” spectrum. From industry news to music reviews to hardware synth conversations, this site truly takes a broad and all inclusive approach toward the community. One of their latest releases, the HTML5 Drum Machine developed by Jamie Thomson, has been described as one of “the most advanced in-browser drum machines available.” “I created this app with the intention that producers could compose and download drum patterns in a highly intuitive and accessible way,” he says.
This aesthetically-pleasing software features multiple 16-step drum patterns to choose from, as well as direct emulation from real hardware drum machines like the TR-808 and the Linndrum. Using the various parameter knobs, you can control the pitch and volume of each element as it cycles through. Finally, Thomson has included a direct and free WAV download option, so that producers can import their creations into programs like Ableton or Logic.
The Drum Machine hosts five sound banks, including hip hop, electro, techno, acoustic, and house. By placing any combination of the 13 provided samples within each bank on the 16-step sequencer, you’ll immediately have a personalized rhythm that you can call your own.
This program can be run on any browser that supports HTML5, and will save your beats for the next time you visit the page. To give the beat-game a try, visit the link above.
Photo Credit: Gizmodo & BeatMakerSessions
Sources: Gizmodo & Synthtopia
