Beats Drum Machine

I propose an enhancement (stolen from Roland MRC operating system of yore): instead of a x to mark a note, use numbers from 0 to 9, to allow for varying velocity (0 sending a note-off, useful for many drum effects)

Can't wait till people are composing full songs as a series of YAML files and samples, then publishing them on Github.<p>After all, there's not a huge amount of difference, conceptually, between remixing and forking!

Super cool, this is the kind of neat stuff that happens when programmers have hobbies apart from programming. Love it.

Add the possibility of sub-second timing errors, that way the music will feel more real, as performed by a human.

Great idea, that's an interesting approach. Lay down a score, and play it - truly a 21st century player piano. There's plenty of programs that will do this with confusing graphical interfaces and binary formats, of course. The yaml interface is the best touch.<p>I'm a musician as well as a programmer, and my favorite mobile/touch apps are the instruments. Now there's one I can play from the command line, too! To the tune of 'scrathing your own itch', my goal is to make an iOS music app or two. I'll definitely be reading the sources for this.

I started off building something like this a while ago (and never got round to finishing it). I like your implementation better.<p>One interesting feature I had which you don't is polyrythms <a href="http://code.google.com/p/drumscript/source/browse/PolyTest.py" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/drumscript/source/browse/PolyTest.p...</a> which I found quite interesting. Would be cool to see them included in this.

I know it's a no-content comment, but: Thank You. I didn't know I had been waiting for this. But oh, I had :)

This is the author - thanks for the comments! Interested to see what beats people cook up.

I'm totally illiterate when it comes to music, but I do like electronic music. If you do end up creating something you really like with Beats, please do share the source code. Thanks!

This looks amazing! Going to test it right now!

On OS X:<p>beats song.txt song.wav &#38;&#38; afplay song.wav<p>Provides really quick feedback. On Linux you could probably just use aplay. No idea for windows?

Trying to imagine Keith Moon hunched over a keyboard, laying out drum tracks... nah, can't do it.

Looks great.<p>Can't wait for the emacs mode.

Cool idea.<p>This is currently the online drum machine to beat, IMO: <a href="http://www.soniccharge.com/patternarium" rel="nofollow">http://www.soniccharge.com/patternarium</a>

I wonder why set linespacing for pre tag to almost a average char width

That's it, I'm getting the band back together. It's a quartet: vim, emacs, pico &#38; elvis.<p>Best. Program. Evar.

This is cool but only a toy. I do look forward to a more elaborate version. Maybe an api where you can just feed tracks right in the browser.<p>Check out <a href="http://audiotool.com" rel="nofollow">http://audiotool.com</a> for a very advanced electronic music composer online.