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The miniature refers to the history of electronic percussion machines – from Léon Theremin’s first “Rhythmicon” to Roland’s iconic instruments from the 1980s.
It combines the classic XOX step sequencer with a Euclidean rhythm generator based on an algorithm known from ancient Greek mathematics.
It is a simple but flexible instrument that allows you to build complex (poly)rhythmic structures. The dr(um) XOX E(uclidean) machine evokes both the culture of experimental electronics and the street origins of dance music, showing that the logic of rhythm and algorithm have common sources.
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This Miniature is a dr(um) XOX E(uclidean) machine, a drum machine with an XOX step sequencer and a Euclidean rhythm generator. It combines several elements drawn from the historical and contemporary development of music technologies and their cultural reception. It is a very simple instrument, but thanks to several features, such as the ability to randomize and create tracks of varying lengths for different percussion instruments, and the aforementioned Euclidean mechanisms, it allows for the creation of various (poly)rhythmic structures.
Drum machines are musical instruments that allow for the production of percussion sounds and the creation of rhythmic structures, i.e., sequences. Their history dates back at least to 1930-32, when the visionary engineer Léon Theremin constructed the Rhythmicon – an instrument reputedly exceptionally difficult to operate, yet capable of creating rhythmic structures based on harmonic series. The Rhythmicon’s output, however, constituted musical material too difficult to play on “manually”controlled instruments. Thus, Theremin’s instrument immediately brought about a small musical revolution: it shifted the emphasis in musical exploration from training and the application of manual dexterity to thinking about the very nature and usefulness of musical material, whose complexity could now be derived from the intellectual potential and aesthetic and creative imagination of its creator.
Another revolution came with the Roland TR-808 (1980), TR-606 (1981), and Roland TR-909 (1983) drum machines, and the TB-303 (1981) bass synthesizer. Apparently, the manufacturer designed these instruments (especially the TR-606 and TB-303) as inexpensive training aids for more traditional instruments (e.g., guitar), providing a somewhat more engaging playing companion than a metronome. Musicians with relatively traditional aesthetic preferences generally ignored Roland’s innovations, while the instruments, after being culturally scrapped by their original target audience, were adopted by street and underground dance cultures (e.g., acid house is considered a musical genre that essentially emerged from basement and garage experiments with the TR/TB).
Before instrument prices skyrocketed, it turned out that street music (counter)cultures possessed equipment that helped overcome the shortcomings of a musician’s manual craft (though it must be admitted that these instruments also had their virtuosos) and, like Theremin’s innovation, shifted the definition of musical task toward translating the effects of musical imagination into a sonic result (that is, closer to compositional tasks, although the range of resources and work methodology here differs significantly from the “grand” compositional ethos cast in bronze and set in marble). It quickly became clear that the possessors of such musical imagination came from less than obvious backgrounds.
The XOX step sequencer is one of the revolutionary and at the same time incredibly simple and obvious (once you understand it) mechanisms for editing the rhythmic structures that constitute what a drum machine should possess. A rhythmic pattern in a step sequencer with XOX editing consists of a fixed number of steps that can be turned on (X) or off (O). Patterns can be looped or sequenced, and are typically divided into tracks for separate instruments.
Euclidean rhythms are an idea described by Godfried Toussaint, derived from the algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two natural numbers by the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Euclid, and E. Bjorklund’s research on the application of patterns generated by the Euclidean algorithm in contemporary applied sciences (Bjorklund formulated his ideas while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the early 2000s). Godfried Toussaint discusses his concept in detail in his article The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms demonstrating how rhythmic patterns characteristic of many musical cultures from different times correspond to the structure of binary sequences obtained using the Euclidean algorithm. The concept is relatively simple to implement in digitally controlled devices and dr XOXE also has such a mechanism.