Drum Generates

Digital signatures of popular music genres to examine the similarities and differences they own, through an agnostic medium, without being distracted with the baggage that sound brings.

I wanted to create a medium in which you can analyse the structure of music, without having to hear it, or be able to read it. I decided to use drums, because they are very present in almost every genre, in some way.

I hooked up electronic drums via MIDI to a set of LEDs and made it so that each LED had a corresponding drum hit. I then attached the set of LEDs to a motor on the end of a stick, so that then when the motor turned (it did a complete rotation in about 20 seconds) and a camera pointing towards it took a 20 second exposure, it basically captured a digital footprint of the bars that were played by the drummer.

I then set up the posters I produced altogether in a room, in an arrangement where you could see multiple posters at once, so that you have the ability to see the differences in one glance.

You can see all the posters in more detail here http://jthaw.me/drums/