Analog drum machines were the original source for artificial percussion sounds.
First built to accompany musicians during performances without drums, they later became a staple of early electronic music.
But without samples, or recordings of actual drum hits, how did analog drum machines work?
What made them so special, and why do producers still gravitate toward analog-style drum sounds today?
In this article, I’ll break down the basics of analog drum machines and suggest the best ways to capture their unique sound in your DAW.
Let’s get started.
What is an analog drum machine?
An analog drum machine is a hardware instrument that relies on electrical circuitry to produce synthesized drum sounds for use in music production.
Most analog drum machines are subtractive synthesizers that use elements similar to those found in keyboard-based analog synths like resonant filters, envelopes and noise oscillators.
With specialized architecture and clever programming, analog drum machines can synthesize unique drums and percussion that sounds musical without directly simulating acoustic drums.
Though now considered iconic instruments, early analog drum machines were quickly replaced by digital units as designers preferred the realism and repeatability of newer sample-based technology.
But over time, artists and producers returned to classic analog drum machines for their warmth, punch and unique character.
Today, original instruments from the analog drum machine era are highly sought after among collectors and a new generation of hardware builders has embraced analog technology in exciting modern designs.
Not only that, plugin developers have also explored emulations of analog drum synthesis to bring the unique flavor of classic drum machines DAW-based workflows.
For example, Tekno is inspired by the architecture of vintage drum machines and bring the unique quirks of their circuitry into the digital production age—but more on that later!
Drum machine history
Electronic musical instruments began appearing in the mid-twentieth century as innovations in circuit design allowed inventors to experiment with new ways of generating sound.
With the advent of solid state transistors, the modern synthesizer took shape as figures like Robert Moog and Don Buchla developed their early concepts.
During this time, synthesizers were primarily considered keyboard instruments and were almost exclusively controlled with piano-style keyboards.
But many designers wanted to synthesize a more diverse range of sounds, including drums and percussion.
The first commercially available percussion synthesizers to gain popularity were preset rhythm machines like the Ace-Tone Rhythm Ace.
Brought to market by Ikutaro Kakehashi who would go on to found the Roland Corporation, the Rhythm Ace series had 16 preset patterns and four buttons to manually trigger its four instrument sounds.
With just cymbal, claves, cowbell and bass drum sounds available and no way to program custom patterns, the Rhythm Ace and its competitors were neither realistic, nor flexible.
As a result, they were seen as novelty devices rather than serious instruments and often came installed with the popular parlour organs of the era.
In the late 70s, Roland released the first fully programmable drum machine with the CR-78. Its basic drum sounds were fixed, but it allowed musicians to input their own patterns for the first time ever.
With the success of the CR-78, Roland refined its approach with the TR-series, which included the legendary all-analog TR-808 and hybrid TR-909.
How does an analog drum machine work?
An analog drum machine works by generating a short pulse signal when the sequencer triggers the drum to start playing.
You can think of the pulse like a square wave signal with a very short duty cycle, or pulse width.
From there, the pulse signal goes into a circuit meant to prepare the pulse by shaping it with specific characteristics for the next step.
By adjusting the width, amplitude and decay of the pulse signal, the pulse shaper has a considerable impact on the next phase in the signal chain.
After shaping, the pulse signal hits a resonant filter circuit. The ringing resonance of the filter is the principal source of the drum sound.
Think of a keyboard-style synth when you push its filter to the edge of self-oscillation. The ringing filter forms the pitched body of the drum which sounds percussive when excited by the shaped pulse.
To enhance the percussive nature of the resonant filter, a feedback network adds some of the ringing filter signal back to its input.
This reinforces the resonance of the filter, making its pitched component seem more apparent.
To avoid runaway feedback and simulate the effect of a drum head recoiling after being struck, the signal gets filtered again before arriving back at the input.
This ensures that some energy will be lost during each feedback cycle so the drum sounds resonant but decays away naturally over time.
To simulate noisier instruments like the wire of snare of the strike of an open hihat, enveloped noise sources are used to add inharmonic components to the signal.
Creating complex noisy harmonics like those generated by a cymbal is especially challenging in the analog domain, so many analog drum machines employed unique techniques to get around those limitations.
How to get analog drum machine sounds in your DAW
The best way to get authentic analog drum sounds is with a real analog drum machine.
But not everyone has access to the resources to acquire one, or has the time to work with a quirky vintage instrument.
If you’re looking to get a convincing analog sound with modern power and flexibility, Tekno gives you the best of both worlds with plenty of style and personality.
Tekno was created in collaboration with Jatin Chowdhury, who is well known for his expertise in modeling analog systems.
To create each of Tekno’s 18 voices, Jatin and the team at Baby Audio dissected classic analog circuits and analyzed their unique non-linearities.
The result was an authentic take on a rarely modeled corner of the music technology world.
Of call Tekno’s unique drum engines, Kick B, Snare B and the toms, congas and cowbell are among the most closely modeled analog-style voices.
Try extending Kick B’s Length parameter to hear the familiar booming kicks of a well known hardware unit popular with hip-hop artists.
Or tune the Tom voices lower for a simpler, raw kick sound that hearkens back to early modular designs.
And don’t forget to add saturation, limiting and clipping to bring out Tekno’s vintage qualities with even more harmonics. You’ll get even heavier analog drums than the most sought after vintage units can deliver!
Analog heart, digital mind
The designers of the early analog drum machines could never have imagined how essential they would become to the history of music technology.
While the industry quickly moved on to digital approaches once they became available, it was the analog units that would go on to kickstart the electronic music revolution.
With Tekno, our goal was to expand on that legacy and bring it further into the future—imagine if you could build a vintage drum machine with all the processing power of a modern production computer?
Tekno delivers on that promise, offering the best of both worlds and massive hybrid drums in your DAW.
Now that you know a bit more about analog drum machines, get back to your DAW and start making beats with Tekno.