Tell me more ×
Musical Practice & Performance Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for musicians, students, and enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote -2 down vote favorite
1

I'm looking for a software drum machine that's easy to work with programatically. My goal is to use this as an intelligent metronome for creating drills to practice against.

Simplistically, I want to be able to lay out a drum pattern, then be able to code against it sort of like this:

"patternfile=./my_pattern.txt"

tempo = 40 while tempo <= 40 play pattern 30 times tempo = tempo + 1 end

Does anybody know of anythicn like this which already exists?

share|improve this question
You might find the answers to this question useful. – luser droog Jan 18 at 4:52
In case you're totally lost, I'd start with a MIDI synth (like IIRC timidity but google-around you know?), and look for a midi library that lets you build sequences and dispatch them. – luser droog Jan 18 at 7:13
I would guess that pretty much all (software) drum machines and sequencers are controllable through MIDI, so using some MIDI API (for Ruby) you should be able to feed them appropriate tempo change messages at times of your choice by also listening to timing messages from the MIDI device. – Ulf Åkerstedt Jan 18 at 15:56
Per the FAQ, shopping recommendations are off-topic. – Luke Jan 21 at 19:25

closed as off topic by Luke, Monica Cellio, Dr Mayhem♦, Wheat Williams, Andrew Mar 4 at 21:35

Questions on Musical Practice & Performance Stack Exchange are expected to relate to music practice, performance, composition, technique, theory, or history within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here.

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

Try `beats' library(gem) of Ruby scripts. http://beatsdrummachine.com

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Not exactly what you want, but perhaps useful: Midge. It creates midi files from textual description. It should be easy to use any language you want to create the text files as input for midge.

share|improve this answer
up vote -1 down vote

For Ruby: Archaeopteryx and Midilib

share|improve this answer
Can you explain why these would be good choices? – Luke Feb 13 at 22:40

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.