And while there are an infinite number of analog and digital drum machines on the market, most tend towards the ephemeral, finding favor among a few artists for a few years, before the sound becomes dated and the artists move on. But owing to some mystical fake-drum alchemy, for nearly 40 years, the Roland series of 606s through 909s have managed to find relevance again and again.
What are the odds that a drum sound as stereotypically ’80s as the one found in Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home” or Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” would title a Kanye West album or provide the main instrumentation in Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen”?
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.