Fun with a 909

So, my friend Peter lent me his beloved TR-909 drum machine. After a bit of messing about, including tracking down an IEC C9 mains lead (from here), it's working, and is wonderful, particularly when messed about with. I already posted this G2 resonator patch, which is a copy of the effect in Ableton Live. Last night I made this patch (+ audio sample), in which the G2 tries to recreate the sounds it's getting at the inputs, using just a simple oscillator+filter. It sounds really wiggy, but somehow still a bit like a 909. Finally, and least interestingly, here [mp3] is the 909 coming through the spring reverb and VRS-23. Thanks, Peter!

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

Wow, it's like insta-Glitch. Makes me wish I had a G2.

# posted by

FUNZONE : 9:14 am

If you're handy with a soldering iron, you can replace the 2 prong style socket with the more readily available 3 prong. Takes about 5 mins, did it on a few 909s already, no problem. Love musicthing btw. Best, Donnacha.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:46 pm

OR, you could get a...DRUMMER. Yeah, I know, it's a weird, out of the box idea, but it just might work!

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:29 pm

drummers are always off time, and take up too much space (and drink all the beer).

the glitchy re-creations sound excellent. I've been playing around with an audio-to-MIDI converter, playing bass through it and sending the MIDI out to my Korg synth. The program seems to pick up on the harmonics and cycle through them monophonically, so a little tweaking gets a sort-of arpeggiator approximation on each note.

It's the unexpected things that make translation sound interesting.

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:04 pm