Who invented the drum machine?
One of the laziest takes in music history is that technology stunts the creative process. There is an argument for AI that will continue to rage on, but the technology that came before that, such as guitar effects and synthesisers, only increased the way that people could play, which pioneered the way for further genres. Psychedelic music, disco and hip-hop couldn’t have had the impact on the music they did have were it not for technological advancements, and the drum machine was a big part of that.
As was the case for many electronic instruments, getting the drum machine to where it needed to be was a slow process. For instance, when the synthesiser was first being developed, it worked, sure, but it sounded much worse than acoustic counterparts such as pianos.
For instance, when Wendy Carlos was experimenting with synthesisers, she decided to recreate classical compositions with them. She managed this with the album Switched-On Bach, but it was a challenge because of the limitations present within the synth in its early development stages.
“I found that the instrument I used was merely the best one that I could find at the time,” said Carlos, “It was such a limited device. It wasn’t much of a musical instrument. It was very lacking in any form of expression, and the proof of this is that there were very few people who used the instrument who did anything interesting with it. The reason being, it was damn hard to do.”
The same thing happened with the drum machine. While we now know that it’s an instrument that can be used for a variety of reasons and produces different sounds that help in the world of rock, rap, shoegaze, indie music, and electronic music, it started as a lessened version of actual drums. There was no need to use one because you could get a much better sound from just using regular drums.
The electronic drums and drum machines were made popular in rock music by Phil Collins, who was one of the first drummers to use them and show how well their versatility could play into rock as a genre. People hadn’t used it much before, but when he started frequenting them both in Genesis and as a solo artist, it was a real turning point. However, while Collins might have played a big part in making the drum machine popular, he didn’t invent it.
So, who actually invented the drum machine?
Leon Theremin and Henry Cowell invented the world’s first drum machine in 1930. Despite the name, it was very much just a keyboard that made percussive sounds. Every note played set off a set of notes that were played and generated rhythmic patterns. There were a lot of rhythmic patterns that could be played on the drum machine, to the point that it was calculated that it would take 455 days to play every single one.
While this (and some models that came after it) set the groundwork for the drum machine, they weren’t a great representation of what we know the machine to be today. That came in the ‘70s when the beatbox machines came to the market. One of the most important was the Eko Corporation ComputeRhythm, which was made in 1972. It was the most important and inspired many modern drum machine models today. It could be programmed with 16 steps and was used by an array of different artists.
Since then, there have been multiple iterations of the drum machine, as not only can patterns be programmed, but there are also electronic drum kits, which are frequently used in music. They have played a big part in the development of various genres.
