Drumbox

drumbox
Drumbox

The Drumbox is an electronic percussion instrument. The first prototype was simply a contact microphone going through a Boss DD-2 delay pedal inside a cardboard box. With very short delay times set on the pedal, a decent imitation of a percussion instrument could be created (the idea is related to Karplus and Strong’s paper on string and drum synthesis from the 1970s). I wanted to add more complexity to the sound, so I built a custom circuitboard based around an ARM microcontroller to recreate the delay effect and mix it with an enveloped sine wave to allow the potential for inharmonic tone relationships within the sound. The resulting sound is combined with enveloped filtered noise, and the performer has quick control of the drum’s pitch and timbral characteristics via an X/Y touchpad and several knobs.

The Drumbox appears in the piece Fictitious Forces.

Jason Treuting records Fictitious Forces on the Drumbox Jason Treuting records Fictitious Forces on the Drumbox