From chris@cybmedia.comMon May 8 09:06:34 1995 Date: Sat, 6 May 1995 19:57:55 -0700 From: Chris Meyer To: b-4@morebbs.com, analogue@hyperreal.com Subject: Re: Sequential drum machine At 12:58 PM 5/6/95, b-4@morebbs.com wrote: >On my trip to the pawn shops today I found a Sequential drum machine. It has >the word Tom in bold on the front, which I assume is the name of the machine. >It doesn't look to be analog, but it was cheap. Can anyone give me info on it. Ah, Tom...one of "the boys in the band", of which the misguided Max was also a member (boy, I hated that sales idea...). It is digital. It is a little grungy. It is a great noisemaker. This was one of the first drum machines to borrow sampler/synth technology in that the samples were dynamically allocated between voices (only 4, in this case) rather than hard-assigned to channels. This voice chip was first custom chip we ever designed at Sequential. It gave Tom the capability of playing up to four copies of the same sound at once, allowing overlapping cymbals etc. It also followed up on the Drumtrax concept of programmable pitch and volume (and pan, although there was a limited number of positions), so (for example) the same tom sample at different pitches would overlap rather than cut it off. It had a huge pitch range on the sounds. It also allowed sounds to be played backwards - another rarity in drum machines at the time. As a result of this you got all sorts of very different sounds out of this box. I did the MIDI for Tom, and greatly expanded on ideas first tested in an update I made for the Drumtrax (which was my first project at Sequential). I allowed chords of drums to be played, chromatic playing of drums, the same samples to be played together with a slight delay to cause a deep flange sound, etc. One common trick was to set auto-repeat on with a very fast repeat, hold down a key for a drum, vary the volume with the mod wheel, and vary the pitch with the pitchbend wheel or lever. Matt Isaacson pioneered this technique; this is the root of the "ripping" and buzzsaw sounds you hear on some Tack>>Head and Keith LeBlanc albums (I don't know if they used a Tom, but it was the first to allow this). I also created the electronic cartridge of sounds for it, patching many of them (esp. the kick and noise burst) up on an Oberheim 2-voice with a custom Gentle Electric outboard cabinet of VCAs etc. I made some cool samples on that rig that don't appear on the cartridge, such as a really realistic wooden acoustic snare (discarded because the point of the cart was to sound electronic). Mark Isham used to use the cartridge (particularly on his album with Art Lande). I almost lost my hearing doing that cartridge; my ears were becoming so desensitized by the end of the project I had to keep turning the amp into realms never seen on that volume control knob before. To this day I am still overly sensitive to loud fast-transient sounds; my ears will start to click and "mute" when I listen to stuff like this. The model number for the Drumtrax was 400; the Tom was the 420. I went on to design the Studio 440 - numbered such because it was originally supposed to be a super-Tom (double the voices, two or three cart ports, etc.) I used to have the last Tom ever made. It had scrawled inside "This is the last one ever builted" (sic). I sold it to Drew Neumann of Droomusic in LA (as I said, I am no longer a collector). Ah, Tom, I knew ye well... - CM ============================================================================= Chris & Trish Meyer - CyberMedia Motion Graphics & Sound Design email: chris@cybmedia.com or CyberTrish@AOL.com fax: (818) 880-5099 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Sound can act as a painkiller...we now have music sufficiently powerful to act as a practical weapon." - William Burroughs & Material/Ineffect ============================================================================= From robls@digidesign.comThu May 25 14:11:40 1995 Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 13:45:18 -0700 From: Rob Lodes To: analogue@hyperreal.com Subject: Under Rated boxes As long as I'm on the underrated boxes kick. The Sequential Tom was one of the best beat boxes to hit the streets. It's way too bad they made it look like Mattel toy. The software in the box was programmed by the same person that did all that great stuff for emu's SP12 and SP1200. I don't know her name but she's awsome in my book. One of the very cool things about the Tom is that you could get cartrages with more samples for it. These carts are pretty simple. There is room for two eproms in a cart. The memory map is pretty stright forward (I use to have it but lost it when I moved to the Gray Area). If you have an eprom blower (and can count in hex) you can make carts yourself. I've done this and it works very well. If someone has a copy of the memory map please let me know. It also works as a simple sequencer. There is a trigger instrament that can be programed and then sent out a midi channel. This works for simple melodies and such (all the instraments can do this but the trigger doesn't play a sound). It was one of the first beat boxes with programable pan, reverse play and pictch (that could be changed in the sequence). It also did a flange type effect by playing the instrument again right after the first time. It had this "Roll" type feature that would let you hold down a button and play a roll on the instrament at the level of the quantize (again, I believe, the first to do this). It's big drawbacks were that it was only stereo out (this is probably what killed it). It was only four voice (almost, but not quite enough) so it would steal cymbles a lot. The buttons felt like sh*t (even though they looked the same as the DrumTrax buttons that feel great). It came with a wall wart (at least it was a bump in the line type so that it didn't hog up two sockets) And again it looked like Mattel made it. Probably they were trying to compeat with little silver boxes for that ultimate look 8.) I like mine alot and still use it as my midi to trigger box. I got it used for $200 about 6 years ago. Had I been better informed I probably never would have bought the Yamaha RX11 (which I sold off a long long long time ago). If someone can come up with the memory map I'll be glad to make some eproms for other Tom users (remember you have to be able to count in hex). -Rob-