Drum Machines and Popular Music

             Drum machines are one of the biggest contributors to the popular music of today. But when you get down to the heart and guts of a drum machine what you have is not an instrument but a computer. Drum machines are made of pads or buttons whose sensors trigger prerecorded or captured musical samples. In the early stages of drum machines, by which I mean pre-digital, the sensors triggered tape loops.

            Harry Chamberlin made the first modern day drum machines circa 1947 in California. He figured out a way to build a machine based on tape loops. This machine was called the Chamberlin Rhythmate. It had fourteen different tape loops of various samples that could be manipulated by both pitch and speed. It had an input for a microphone or guitar, so you could even record and make you own loops of what you were playing. But the most important aspect of this machine was that it had tape loops of real instruments that were recorded and could be recalled at any time.

            This brought on a whole new way of creating music. It even brought new genres like electronic music. Some other big drum machines where the Roland TR-808 which made a lot of early hip-hop records. The next step in drum machine technology was the use of sampling. The Linn LM-1 drum was the first machine to use digital sampling instead of actual tape loops. The Linn LM-1 drum sound was a distinct part of 1980’s pop music. Artists like Devo and The Human Leagues, even Prince’s all time great album Purple Rain, used this machine. Then in 1982 the Linn LM-1 drum evolved into the LinnDrum. The LinnDrum was a cheaper more technology advanced drum machine that can be most famously heard in Giorgio Moroders’s Scarface film soundtrack and the Cars Heartbeat City album. However, a major issue with drum machines such as the LinnDrumm and LM, is that they started to put session drummers out of work. Many session drummers would end up buying drum machines and then programming their own drum sounds into their machine. This was due to the fact that the industry had become accustomed too, even demanding, a drum machine produced sound. Various other drum machines gained prevalence throughout the next 10 years; the Roland TR-808 and 909, the Oberheim DMX, the E-mu Drumulator, and the Yamaha RX11.           

            Drum machines allow for thousands of samples to be pulled up and utilized during production. Any sound can be found at any time. This ability eventually led to drum programming and sequencing. Programmed drum beats are at the heart of all pop music today, most notably seen within EDM. People in today’s musical world even like to blend the real playing of drums with effected samples. This mix can probably be found in almost every song on the radio today. Music is inherently wed to technology; as one goes so does the other. Thanks to sampling and drum machines new genres of music have been created and can be enjoyed by people around the globe.