FIVE VELOCITIES
Click a step. Five, then off.
Try it here: each click steps a note up through the five velocities and back to nothing, as the panel does. ACCENT sets how far below the top the other four fall.
A drum computer of drum synthsAll drums
Component-Modeled Drum Computer · Eight Drum Synths
Dropforge
Eight drum synths. Every note its own effects.
Eight voices, each a drum synth of its own, played by a song of up to 1,024 one-bar pages in sixty-fourth notes. A note can carry its own effects, its own place left or right and its own settings, and the note after it never hears them.
VST3 · Windows 64-bit No activationmacOS VST3 and Audio Unit are not built yet.
- 8 drum synths
- 64 steps a bar
- 1,024 bars
- 6 effects, note by note
Hear it
Twelve takes, straight out.
Played on the instrument and recorded as it played. Their levels are matched to one another, and nothing else was done to them on the way here.
THE SONG
One bar on the page. A song behind it.
Sixty-four steps across and eighteen lanes down, a sixty-fourth note a step, and up to 1,024 pages played in order.
6 effects, note by note
Effects that belong to a note.
A note lasts from its voice's stroke to the next one. Switch an effect on for a step, and the notes on that step have it from their first sample. What it made of them rings on after them; the next note never goes in. The voices are component-modeled; the six effects are digital algorithms, and are called that here.
CRUSH The note rounded to two to the power of BITS levels across full scale, from sixteen bits down to one. BITS
The arithmetic
65,536sixty-fourth notes in a song
1,024pages64steps a page
A page is a bar, and every step of every page has its own 18 lanes: what is struck and how hard, which effects it has, where it is thrown, and what it is locked to.
8 voices, and the song
Every voice a whole synth.
The kick, the snare and the hats are Pile Driver, Rivet Gun and Tin Snips, linked whole. The clap is a clap synth of its own, and the stick, the toms, the cymbal and the shaker were made here to the same depth. Every one has a page of every control its synth has.
SONG The page of sixty-four steps by eighteen lanes, the song's plate, the clock, and the six effects' knobs.
And the rest of it
Every step a decision.
LOCK A AND LOCK B
Any control, step by step.
Click a lock lane's name, then touch any knob on any page: a voice's DECAY, an effect's SHIFT. Each step can hold its own value. A lock takes hold just ahead of its note, so the note starts where it was told to, and the knob is what it gives back after.
PAN
Thrown, but never the kick.
Every note on a PAN step but the kick goes left or right by up to 50 degrees. The throw comes from the song's position, so the same song throws the same way every time.
THE CRATE
Every groove in Thump.
Pick a family, pick a groove, and it lands on two pages at its own tempo and swing, ready to be drawn on.
MIDI AND OUTPUTS
From your keys, to your mixer.
The GM drum map on any channel, or each voice on a channel of its own with its whole map. Nine stereo outputs: the mix, and one for each voice.
YOURS
No activation.
No license server, and no phone-home. Twelve kits to start from, and every voice's own bank of sounds.
At a glance
Dropforge specifications
| Format | VST3 instrument · Windows 64-bit |
|---|---|
| Not built yet | macOS VST3 and Audio Unit |
| Voices | 8 drum synths · kick, snare, hats, stick, toms, clap, cymbal, shaker |
| The song | Up to 1,024 one-bar pages · 64 steps a page, a sixty-fourth note a step |
| Lanes | 18 · 9 of notes at 5 velocities, 6 of effects, PAN, 2 locks |
| Effects | Crush, reduce, a sixteenth-note delay, a Freeverb, pitch, stretch · note by note |
| Locks | 2 lanes, each any control from any page |
| PAN | Every note but the kick, thrown up to 50 degrees either way |
| MIDI | The GM drum map on any channel, or each voice on its own channel |
| Outputs | 9 stereo · the mix, and one for each voice |
| Presets | 12 kits · 111 sounds across the eight voices |
| Parameters | 304 published, all automatable, and the pitch bend |
| The panel | 1500 by 940 · a page for the song and one for each voice |
| Validation | 47 of 47 validator tests · host-tested in Phonon |
| Activation | None. No license server, no phone-home |