Drumcircle
This is a little music toy I made for PCs and mobile phones.
Download (version 1.0.1)
- Mac version
- Windows version
- Linux version (requires SDL and Freetype)
- iPhone version (or search app store for “Drumcircle RH”)
- Android version (requires Android 2.3)
- Source code
What is it?
Drumcircle is a radial drum machine: you place tiles corresponding to notes or drum samples, and they play as the clock hand sweeps past them. An internet-play mode lets you collaborate on drum patterns online with other users of the program. I’m really happy with how this turned out– making drum patterns with the tiles just feels really natural and intuitive, especially on the tablet versions.
Drumcircle includes icon art by Mike LeMieux and 27 different sample voices out of the box.
Sample packs
- The PC version of Drumcircle lets you add your own samples. Download this thing for more information.
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Update 6/28
Someone made this youtube video of themselves using Drumcircle and it is awesome.
May 24th, 2011 at 3:55 am
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May 24th, 2011 at 4:03 am
Will you make a audio file converter for this so we can play it through wav or mp3 files?
May 30th, 2011 at 1:52 am
Please make an audio record for the iPad. And more save banks :). Love this sequencer, I will use it live very soon.
June 1st, 2011 at 12:39 am
Hi–
John: I’m not sure I understand the suggestion. If you mean you want to *input* mp3 or wav samples, the PC version supports wav samples already. See under “sample packs” above. Or do you mean you want to *output* wav/mp3?
Form: That’s awesome to hear! 😀 If you get a good recording of any live work you do with this I’d love to hear it (if you get a video I’d even be interested in uploading that to my youtube channel, I’m still working out making a good video demo of Drumcircle). Unfortunately due to a personal situation I’ve had to halt new work on Drumcircle, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to add new features like that anytime soon. However the source code to the program is available … There are a few features (like a record feature or the ability to copy the savebanks back to your computer) that seem like they would be relatively simple to add and I wish I could have got to. Actually the one feature I really wish for in Drumcircle is something like Fruityloops “song mode”…
June 3rd, 2011 at 2:05 pm
[…] The graphics and sound might be 8-bit, but the options and variables available in this loop generator make it more than just a simple drum machine. Developer: Andrew Mcclure […]
June 7th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Yes, i mean output wav/mp3 files. It would be awesome to share songs with other people.
August 17th, 2011 at 2:28 am
Version 1.0.1 was just uploaded above (PC versions only). New features:
– Wav export, under “Save”
– Volume control under settings
– Hit number keys 1-8 on keyboard to immediately load that save slot (this will erase the current pattern)
The neat thing about that last feature is it means you can save several slightly different patterns and then switch between them to get a live performance effect.
August 17th, 2011 at 2:33 am
By the way, in the source code I’ve started separating out the sound-generation parts of Drumcircle into a separate library so it can be easily embedded into other programs. This part is not quite done yet as of now though.
August 17th, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Oh– one more thing. If you use the wav export feature, you should probably be aware that the sound samples that come with Drumcircle are under licenses which require attribution to reuse. Here’s the attribution line from the Drumcircle readme; if you incorporate a loop made using the Drumcircle sound samples (note: the beep noises aren’t samples) into another work, you should be able to just put this line in your credits and you’ll be fine.
“Featuring open-licensed sound samples by Surachai, Joe Folladori, and (via the One Laptop Per Child archive) The Berklee College of Music, Open Path Music, Flavio Gaete, Colman O’Reilly, Eric Lamothe, Jean Piche, Olivier Belanger and Nathanael Lecaude.”
August 30th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Hi,
This app is very intuitive and addictive. I’ve been composing music on-off for over 20 years and this got me hooked again ;P Please consider developing it further. Some ideas (like you probably don’t have them yourself but anyhow…): ability to add more circles and with different grid-sizes, loading different format samples and from inside the app, BPM display and some-kind of pattern or sequence support – the ability to trigger those circles in sequence and maybe even in parallel. Thank you for this app!
G.
August 30th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
PS. and plz don’t leave linux folks behind when You add those wonderful features…; )
February 7th, 2012 at 11:03 am
Its not loading up on my iphone properly. Any suggestions?
February 16th, 2012 at 3:10 am
Hi Jay, sorry about that– try it now?
February 18th, 2012 at 7:05 am
Hi, I installed it on my mac, and most icons were not showing, and a bunch of the sound files were glitching. Any suggestions?
March 19th, 2012 at 8:44 pm
After talking to Nick, it appears the mac version does NOT work on PPC Macintoshes. Will try to fix this at some point. Intel (post-2006) macs should be fine.
March 28th, 2012 at 11:16 am
hi,
the windows version’s samples crack and the whole app seems to struggle, on the same machine on linux it works fine. any1 else notice that? i have thinkpad x61s, so it´s dual core and all that, should have enough power.
g.
November 26th, 2012 at 9:37 pm
How do you get the online function to work? When I click online it is totally unresponsive. This is on an android.
November 27th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
Hi,
HEELP!! The Online-function is broken! Please, could You fix it? The online, collaborative feature is SO important part of this program. Can it be maybe put on multiple (free) servers, so if one goes offline next one is picked?
Thanks,
LDB
November 30th, 2012 at 4:10 am
To respond to the last few questions:
– The online mode is back up now, sorry about that. I really need to set it to automatically restart when the server crashes.
– The server code, like the game itself, is open source but there is no way to pick alternate servers on the iOS/Android version.
– More than one person has reported the crackly-sound problem on Windows and I don’t know what the deal is.
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