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Awesome Drums

Low-budget Drum Kit

Low-budget Drum Kit

If you look around, you can find a bargain-basement drum kit for about $200. But if even that’s not in your budget, you could do what Deden Noy did, and make your own drums from plastic buckets, water bottles, scrap metal, and packing tape. Check out his YouTube channel for more performances.

Jazz Popcorn Robot

Jazz Popcorn Robot

Musician Moritz Simon Geist creates music with the help of robots. For this performance, he set up a pan filled with hot oil, popcorn, and sensors that triggered strikes on a drum kit each time a popcorn kernel burst open. The resulting beats are definitely giving us a jazz fusion vibe.

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Drummer Learns Enter Sandman

Drummer Learns Enter Sandman

Crazy as it sounds, Snarky Puppy drummer Larnell Lewis says he never heard the Metallica track Enter Sandman before now. But it didn’t take much time for him to pick up the rhythm, which he proved with a flawless performance right after his first listen in this video from Drumeo.

How Drumsticks Are Made

How Drumsticks Are Made

We’ve seen how cymbals are made, now find out how the drumsticks that are used to play them are born. Vic Firth shares footage from inside their factory, where they transform sticks of freshly-cut wood into their premium 5A American Classic sticks, then precision matches them for weight and pitch to ensure perfect pairs.

Drums on Keyboard

Drums on Keyboard

When you want a drum track for your music, you usually get yourself a real drummer or create rhythms with a digital sequencer. But musician Yohan Kim shows that you can be a really good drummer without ever picking up a drumstick, and instead using a keyboard as your instrument of choice.

Slagwerk-101 Robot Drum Machine

Slagwerk-101 Robot Drum Machine

Designer and maker Love Hultén is best known for his retro-inspired video game and computer builds. But this one is quite different – an electromechanical drum machine that plays rhythms using a MIDI sequencer. Each of its components is modular, so it can be reconfigured to create unique audio sculptures.

System of a Tiny Drum

System of a Tiny Drum

…also known as Toxicity on a Toilet. Here’s something you don’t see every day – some guy playing the percussion section of System of a Down song on a miniature drum kit… in his bathroom. He’s also done the same for Twenty One Pilots, Green Day, and The Cranberries, among others.

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Beatbox DIY Drum Machine

Beatbox DIY Drum Machine

A fun DIY kit for musicians, electronics hobbyists, and just about anyone who likes cool gadgets. The Rhythmo Beatbox lets you build a MIDI controller and drum machine in a cardboard box. It’s got arcade-style buttons, built-in sounds, a battery, and speakers. Its companion mobile app enables sound customization.

Keyboard Drummer

Keyboard Drummer

Say you want to make some beats, but you don’t have a drummer in the band. While you could buy a drum machine or some sampled loops, or you could do like musician Yohan Kim and use your keyboard to perform as your rhythm section.

Koka’s Beat Machines

Koka’s Beat Machines

Artist and musician Koka Nikoladze builds electromechanical objects which act like analog drum machines, producing unusual beats using bits and pieces of household objects and hardware to produce their rhythms. Be sure to check out Beat Machines No. 2 and No. 3.

Senspad Drum Kit

Senspad Drum Kit

Redison Music’s Senspad is an electronic drum kit that weighs less than 1.5lb and is nearly as thin as a practice pad. It has three programmable strike zones and lasts up to 12h per charge. You can connect it to mobile devices or PCs via USB or Bluetooth.

UNO Drum Machine

UNO Drum Machine
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IK Multimedia’s compact beat maker was developed in collaboration with Italy’s Soundmachines, and cranks out a mix of analog sounds and PCM sound samples. It can play up to 12 sounds at once, has on-board effects, and can be controlled via USB or MIDI. Demo performance here.

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Drumming with Tape

Drumming with Tape

From pickle tubs to washing machines, there are lots of unusual ways to create percussive sounds. But this clip from Japan’s Open Reel Ensemble is definitely the first time we’ve seen someone using magnetic reel-to-reel tape as a drum kit. More here.

Building a Drum from Scratch

Building a Drum from Scratch

(Gross) How to Make Everything wants to make a collection of musical instruments from scratch. First up is a drum. He made it out of maple wood, pigskin and twine. He had a lot of help from a woodworker, but he did all the gross stuff for the leather.

Roli Beatmaker Kit

Roli Beatmaker Kit

This set from digital instrument maker Roli includes everything you need to play drums and other rhythmic sounds with your fingers. The kit includes a touch-sensitive Lightpad Block, a Loop Block, synth apps, over 300 sounds, and a 6-month subscription to Melodics.

Pocket Operators Metal Series

Pocket Operators Metal Series

Teenage Engineering’s third batch of Pocket Operators is now complete. Accompanying the PO-32 Tonic drum machine are the PO-33 K.O.!, a micro-sampler with 40s memory, and the PO-35 Speak, a voice recorder and sampler.

Willy Wonka with Drums

Willy Wonka with Drums

Drummer David Dockery is back with another rhythmic reinterpretation of a classic scene. This time, he transposed the dialogue from the famous fizzy lifting drink argument from Willy Wonka into a drumbeat. Listen to the beat without the voices here. “I said GOOD DAY!”

Incredible Taiko Drum Ensemble

Incredible Taiko Drum Ensemble

An earthshaking taiko drum performance by Senzoku Gakuen College of Music’s percussion ensemble that’s equal parts drumming talent, and choreography. The track is called Fertility of the Sea, composed by Eitetsu Hayashi. We can only imagine the sound with a good subwoofer.

PO-32 Tonic Drum Machine

PO-32 Tonic Drum Machine

The latest addition to Teenage Engineering’s awesome Pocket Operators is a programmable drum machine you can tote in your pants. Available by itself, or bundled with Microtonic VST letting you upload custom sounds. A nifty calculator inspired pro case drops this April.

Deal: iWord Electronic Digital Drum Kit

Deal: iWord Electronic Digital Drum Kit
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Turn your desktop into a complete drum kit with this roll-up electronic drum pad. The system includes 7 drum pads and two foot pedals, and you can listen via headphones, built-in speakers, or use it as a USB Midi controller. Save 37% in The Awesomer Shop. Demo here.

Tiny Tom Sawyer 2

Tiny Tom Sawyer 2

Street performer Ricky Syers gave his rocker puppet Chopsy a massive upgrade from its tin can drum set. The new kit looks so polished we can barely believe that it’s handmade. This would make for an awesome drum pad.

Obilab Cardboard Drum Kit

Obilab Cardboard Drum Kit

Obilab’s portable rhythm section folds down flat and fits inside a cardboard backpack, letting drummers set up impromptu jam and practice sessions pretty much anywhere – as long as it’s not raining. Listen to sample sounds at the bottom of their Kickstarter page.

Drumeo P4 Practice Pad

Drumeo P4 Practice Pad

Designed by veteran drummer and instructor Pat Petrillo, the P4 is the world’s first drum practice pad to have multiple height levels and four different pads that mimic the feel of percussion instruments. The variety helps you stay creative and keeps exercises fresh.

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