Sound Lab

Behind the kits.

Recorded instruments, shaped into three distinct voices for the rhythm study.

Alloy. Rock / metal.

Built around hybrid drum recordings supplied by Christopher Fisher: a matched kick, snare, hats, crash and tuned toms. Light EQ keeps the original production character, with stereo snares and cymbals and a centred kick. Cymbal tails are shortened for repeated beats.

Neon breaks. Cyberpunk.

A separate hybrid kit provides the foundation. An additional snare attack layer, focused EQ, oversampled parallel saturation and tighter decays shape it for aggressive drum and bass patterns. Stereo detail stays in the snare and cymbals.

Both kits include three produced timbral variants of the supplied voices. Softer velocity darkens the sound; harder velocity brings back the full attack. These are processed variations of the recordings, rather than three separately recorded strikes. The ride, clap, rim and cowbell retain their earlier AVL recordings and recorded velocity layers.

808. Original machine.

Recordings made directly from a Roland TR-808 by Michael Fischer of Technopolis, from the 1994 Sound Sample Set 1.0.0. The recordings are trimmed, level-balanced and edge-faded here. The TR-808 has a cymbal voice rather than a separate acoustic ride: the long and short cymbal assignments use different recorded settings.

Sources & licences.

The supplied hybrid recordings are used with permission. Their inclusion here does not grant a separate sample redistribution licence.

The auxiliary AVL recordings come from AVL Drumkits, created by Glen MacArthur, 2015. Formats: SFZ, SF2 and h2drumkit. Contact: info@bandshed.net. Those recordings and their adaptations retain CC BY-SA 3.0 with AVL’s exception: produced music and other non-sample-library works can be licensed freely. Modified samples and sample libraries retain the share-alike condition, author information and a different library name.

Complete AVL licence and author notice · Original licence PDF

Michael Fischer’s TR-808 Sound Sample Set is distributed by TidalCycles under CC0 1.0. Complete CC0 legal text.

Sample files, original filenames, changes and checksums. Each licence applies only to the files identified with it, not to all the kits or the website as a whole. No endorsement by the instrument makers or source authors is implied.

Small enough to play.

Only the selected kit loads when sound is enabled. Kits have bounded tails, and decoded recordings are reused during the session. All sound processing is prepared in advance. Closed and open hi-hats interrupt one another, as they do on an instrument.

Play the rhythm study