...d[-_-]b...

a minimal drum machine you can use to design drum patterns that can be played back with different instruments at precise time steps.

Dependencies

• Numpy
• Sounddevice
• SoundFile

Install

pip install pydrummer

Test

python3 test.py pytest

Demo

python3 demo.py

Usage

1. Create a Player that we'll use to play our sounds.

from player import Player
player = Player()

2. Create a Song to hold our clips.

from models.song import Song
song = Song()

3. Add a Clip.

import config
song.add_clip(config.SM808, steps=8)

Note: You can create new drumkits and add instruments in 'config.py'. In this example we used the SM808 drumkit.

config.py:

SM808 = {
    'clap': 'samples/808/clap.wav',
    'clave': 'samples/808/clave.wav',
    'congahi': 'samples/808/congahi.wav',
    ...
}

4. Add some drum patterns.

First get the clip that we just added to our song.

clip = song.clips[0]

Now we can update our clip with different instrument patterns to be used during playback.

For this example we're going to create a four-on-the-floor rhythm. Four-on-the-floor has a kick drum on every beat. Since the specified number of steps is 8 and the default time signature is 4/4, which is 4 beats a measure, our pattern should look like: [1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0]

That's one kick every 2 steps. To make life easier, you can add a pattern of any length and it will be looped until it reaches the specified number of steps.

clip.add_pattern(name='kick', pattern=[1,0])

Note: 'kick' is the name of the instrument that we provided when we created our clip. The name of the instrument indicates which instrument you want to use for your pattern and must exactly match what was specified when creating the clip.

Let's just add one more pattern before playing our clip to make it more interesting.

clip.add_pattern(name='hhclosed', pattern=[1,1,0,1,1,0,0,1])

5. Play your clip.

player.play(clip=clip, loops=1)

output:

[1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0] (kick3)
[1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1] (hhclosed)
mix hhclosed kick3 hhclosed mix - kick3 hhclosed

A '-' string is printed out to represent silence and a 'mix' string is printed out when two or more sounds had to be mixed so they could be played back at the same time. If loops is unspecified the program will cycle until you ctrl-C.

You can also adjust playback tempo in the player settings.

player.settings.bpm = 60
player.play(clip=clip, loops=1)

Note: You can also play the song that holds the clip. This will be more interesting when we can play multiple clips of different instruments at the same time.

player.play(song=song)