Software Development

How this Philly dev turned your keyboard into a drum kit

Make some beats at work.

Like this but not like this. (Photo by Flickr user @metalchris, used under a Creative Commons license)

Keyboard, meet Typedrummer.
It’s Kyle Stetz’s project that turns your keyboard into drums. Stetz is a developer at P’unk Ave. The tool features samples from Philly musician Moon Bounce.
Use Typedrummer
He talked to CNET about how he did it:

The premise is simple: characters from a text box are interpreted as drum sounds one at a time at 120 bpm [beats per minute]. I loaded 26 drum sounds, mapped from A to Z (capital letters play the same samples as their lowercase counterparts). The code starts with the first letter and plays the corresponding sample…When we run out of letters to read, we loop back to the beginning.
On a technical level, I’m using the Web Audio API, which is a new set of tools baked into modern browsers that give developers the ability to program very complex music into a website.

Read the full story
Stetz, along with P’unk Ave’s Kerry Gilbert and designer Leslie Zacharkow, was also behind the Trestleator, a custom app that controls The Trestle Inn’s projections.

(Screenshot)

Best song ever. (Screenshot)

Companies: P’unk Ave

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