7 Groundbreaking Drum Machines That Changed Music As We Know It

When the first barrel auto strike the marketplace in the fifties , they must have finger like the future . Imagine that — a robotic drummer that does exactly what you tell him to , and does n’t get loaded after the show . Of course , the human drummer never quite go out of style , but tympan machines change music forever .

In his new bookBeat Box : A Drum Machine Obsession , Joe Mansfield traces the history of the box , from their barebones analog origins as machines designed for dim-witted accompaniment , all the agency to the microprocessor - loaded box sophisticated enough to dish as the cardinal element in music .

More than just an encyclopedia , the book is a catalog of Mansfield ’s own passion for membranophone machines — the 75 featured in the book are only half of the 150 he possess . The best part of the well-favoured bulk are the splendiferous photos by Gary Land , which the publisher , Get On Down , has been genial enough to have us bring out here .

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What hit me the most is the dramatic evolution of design . The Wurlitzer Side Man from the 1959 cue me of an old standing wireless orthe KLH 17 speakersin my grandmother ’s apartment . But in the 60s and early 70s , as membranophone machine grovel into the mainstream , gear part to take after vintage guitar amplifier . After all , Jimi Hendrix was lovesome of them , evidenced by his demo fabric , like the blues recording posthumously released on South Saturn Delta .

As analogue beat keepers acquire into computers , they by nature assume the aesthetic of theearly personal information processorsand plastic computers of the 1980s . But in look at Mansfield ’s Bible , it ’s hard not to marvel at the unbelievable design variety — check out some of the highlight below .