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SEMIBEGUN 003: DRUM MACHINE FAMILY PHOTOS

What is a drum machine? Does it really not have a soul? Generally speaking, a drum machine is an electronic instrument that creates synthesized and/or sampled percussion sounds with preset and/or programmable patterns of rhythm. One can certainly make electronic percussion without the use of a drum machine which many composers did and continue to do. Edgard Varèse's 1958 “Poème électronique” features wild electronic sounds organized on tape, many of them percussive. The high hats in Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s 1977 landmark dance hit “I Feel Love” were created with a Moog’s white noise generator, a synthesizer but not necessarily a drum machine proper. Software like Pro Tools and Max/MSP offer myriad ways to craft and organize percussion without explicitly using a drum machine, even a software one. Hardware and software, analog and digital, sampled and synthesized, sometimes drum machines combine all the above. Even in their differences, these examples have an undeniable family resemblance, but the practical and theoretical limits of a drum machine aren’t of primary concern here. Instead, we’re looking at snapshots of its ancestors, developmental stages, and early adolescence.

Depending on the source and qualifications, a few different instruments hold the title of “first.” Written 700 years before the invention of what we typically recognize as a drum machine, engineer Ismail al-Jazari described programmable drum playing automata in his 1206 text The Book Of Knowledge Of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (al-Jāmiʿ bain al-ʿilm wa al-ʿamal al-nāfiʿ fī ṣināʿat al-ḥiyal).[1] This description ticks two main boxes in drum machine functionality—percussive sound production and programmable patterns—so the title of “first” or “oldest” drum machine gets thrown around. From the at least the eighteenth century, European self-playing machines like musical clocks and other automata performed programmed rhythms on demand or on the hour.[2] But for the purist who demands lights, buttons, knobs, and electricity over a floating robot band’s pegs and levers, we must jump to the twentieth century to meet our modern contenders.  

Léon Theremin, far more famous for the instrument bearing his surname than any contributions to drum machine history, built the Rhythmicon (also called the Polyrhythmophone) in 1931 in collaboration with composer and music theorist Henry Cowell. Using a system of spinning discs, light, and photoreceptors, the machine produces both pitch and rhythm in connection to the harmonic series when one of its keys is pressed.[3] The result, although far more rhythmically complex than what a 16-step sequencer can typically manage, lacks the basic percussive kick-snare sounds among other drum machine essentials. Synthesizer scholar Thom Holmes contends that the Rhythmicon is decidedly not a drum machine because a drum machine “is not a sequencer for melodies and tones, nor a way to specify a short series of notes that could be repeated automatically.”[4] But we’re getting closer.

Over the next few decades, composers and engineers continued to craft electronic rhythm and percussion with similar unorthodox results (although what would be orthodox in uncharted territory?). Inventor Raymond Scott, recognizable today for the heavily sampled electronic experiments and jingles by producers like J Dilla and Madlib, established his audio technology company Manhattan Research Inc. in 1946. Scott developed keyboard synthesizers and electronic drum generators throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, utilizing them in his surprisingly experimental (not to mention fun) jingles and compositions.

Prior to the transistor, drum machines like the Wurlitzer Sideman generated simple preset rhythms using electro-mechanical methods such as rotating disks. Harry Chamberlin created the Rhythmate in 1949, a tape-based machine with loops of acoustic drums playing a variety of patterns. It didn’t receive widespread distribution (the first model only sold about ten units, probably because it didn’t sound very good) but the tape-based technology behind it––and the more successful Chamberlin keyboard––would later become the Mellotron, albeit unscrupulously when Chamberlin’s sales associate began manufacturing copies overseas without his consent. The Rhythmate’s legacy includes another controversy: the American Federation of Musicians decried the use of the machine over the familiar fear of job loss in the face of automation.[5] Critics believed the Rhythmate would put acoustic drummers out of business, a criticism that carried on to other machines like the Wurlitzer Sideman. This continued to morph and solidify into the “Drum Machines Have No Soul” bumper sticker sentiment which, although hard to imagine, still lingers unironically, fed by concern over potential economic consequences of automation and cultural preoccupation with “authenticity.”

A variety of pre-programmed drum machines, mostly created as rhythm units to accompany organs, were available throughout the 1960s. Despite their limitations, these machines began appearing on commercial recordings. The famously sampled drum machine in Timmy Thomas’ 1972 hit Why Can’t We Live Together is one such unit in a Lowrey organ.[6] The Wurtlizer Sideman, the first commercial tube-based drum machine, debuted in 1959 and sold throughout the next decade. Other similar noteworthy machines from the era include the Rhythm Ace series from Ace Tone, an early incarnation of Roland, and the Maestro Rhythm King Mk2 famously used by Sly and the Family Stone in the 1971 psychedelic funk album There’s a Riot Goin’ On.

For the introduction of the fully programmable drum machine proper, we turn to the EKO ComputeRhythm. Released in 1972, it boasted a version of the now familiar 16-step grid to program patterns (along with a punch card system for saving them!) and an array of standard percussion sounds produced by way of subtractive synthesis.[7] Manuel Göttsching uses the machine on Sunrain by Ashra. While the instrument potentially led an equally popular double life as a prop on sci-fi sets, the ComputeRhythm had a lasting impact on instrument design. Equipped with microchips, the similarly named Roland “CompuRhythm” CR-78 burst onto the scene in 1978 with the ability to easily program rhythms. Although not their first drum machine, the success of the CR-78 helped cement the Roland name.

Drum machine prevalence and popularity grew as more instruments came to market and found their way into countless diverse applications throughout the 70s and 80s. The reverb-drenched 909s on a song like Schoolly D’s P.S.K. What Does That Mean? gives us a window into a drum-machine driven production style that hip-hop didn’t run with. Just Roland alone has a long, rich history of genre-shaping machines, many of which are still utilized, emulated, and sampled today. The sound and shape of the 808, for instance, continues to transform no longer tethered to the instrument. This mix barely scratches the surface of the musical developments these early instruments helped facilitate, but it attempts to provide snapshots of the drum machine’s formative years.

[1] Avi Golan, “The Musical Boat for a Drinking Party,” <https://aljazaribook.com/en/2019/08/07/the-musical-boat-en/>

[2] A particularly beautiful example of an early music machine, David Roentgen's eighteenth-century automaton of Queen Marie Antoinette pounds away on a little hammered dulcimer. Later, in the early twentieth-century, self-playing dance organs often included a percussion section complete with pitched and unpitched instruments like bells and cymbals. Unrelated to the drum machine discussion (so far, at least), one of the most famous automata of the 1700’s was a duck called The Canard Digérateur which purported to digest grain and then defecate it!

[3] Peter Hoslin, “The Legend of the Rhythmicon, the World’s First Drum Machine,” <https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/06/rhythmicon-feature/>

[4] Thom Holmes, “Drum Machines: A Recorded History, Part 1: Analog Drum Machines,” https://www.thomholmes.com/post/drum-machines-a-recorded-history-part-1-analog-drum-machines

[5] Terry Matthew, “Atomic Age Drum Machines: the Ghost Orchestras of Harry Chamberlin,” <https://5mag.net/gear/audio-archeology/first-drum-machine-chamberlin-rhythmate/>

[6] Oliver Wang, “Timmy Thomas: Rhythm King,” November 1, 2015, <https://soul-sides.com/2015/11/timmy-thomas-rhythm-king.html>. The original assumption in this article is that Timmy Thomas used a Maestro Rhythm King on this track. Later edits confirm he used a Lowrey organ with percussion presets.

[7] HAINBACH, "The First Modern Drum Machine | Eko Computerhythm," <https://youtu.be/XYFg_t8Hjxs/>