Exploring the perceptual relevance of inherent variability of drum sounds

Abstract

It is common "beat programming" practice to construct rhythmic sequences in a one-sample-per-instrument manner. Sounds of separate strokes on a drum, however, generally are not really perceptually identical, even when played with identical intention on the side of the player. Moreover, such unavoidable individual variations go beyond the effects of amplitude scaling or simple linear (e.g., low- or high-pass) filtering. One first simple approach to examine effects of this fact is to construct rhythmical patterns using several samples of each instrument. Experiences in a first pilot study with such "drum-machine-like" patterns suggest that individual note-to-note differences have a relevant influence on the overall character of the musical results. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.