Euclidian Drum Machine

So, this was posted to hacker news. It's more-or-less a drum machine that is based on steps and evenly-distributed pulses. No swing or groove or anything like that, but it's pretty fun.

If you have trouble using it, do this will all the sounds:

steps to 16
pulses to 0
offset to 0

Then, one by one, turn pulses up to 4 and you'll hear each sound it makes on quarter notes.

From there, the basis for a house rhythm (no hats, since it doesn't have house sounds) is 4 pulses with the kick, 0 offset (left most sound), 2 pulses for the snare, offset of 4 (second sound)

Then just play with it. The offset changes how far off the initial downbeat the first pulse of a sound is, in steps. In the spinning display, left most sound is on the outermost ring, right most sound on the innermost ring.

Changing steps changes the number of steps in the pattern and so forth. At the bottom, you'll find reset, tempo, and volume. The reset is the number of steps until the pattern restarts. And a step is a sixteenth note in duration, regardless of how many there are. So, a pattern with 3 steps repeats every 3 sixteenth notes.

Playing with it generates some really fun polyrhythms. And you can record off of it with soundflower or jack if you wanted to.

But...make sure your volume is reasonable or it'll get fatiguing really quickly.

I think it's fun.

http://www.groovemechanics.com/euclid/