lfundaro / beats Goto Github PK

Beats is a command-line drum machine written in pure Ruby. Feed it a song notated in YAML, and it will produce a precision-milled *.wav file of impeccable timing and feel. Here's an example song:

Song:
  Tempo: 105
  Flow:
    - Verse:  x4
    - Chorus: x4
  Kit:
    - bass:     house_2_1.wav
    - snare:    roland_tr_909_2.wav
    - hihat:    house_2_5.wav
    - cowbell:  big_beat_5.wav
    - deep:     house_2_2.wav  

Verse:
  - bass:     X..X...X..X.....
  - snare:    ....X.......X...
  - hihat:    ..X...X...X...X.

Chorus:
  - bass:     X..X...X..X.....
  - snare:    ....X.......X...
  - hihat:    XXXXXXXXXXXXX...
  - cowbell:  ....XX.X..X.X...
  - deep:     .............X..

And here's what it sounds like after getting the Beats treatment. What a glorious groove!

The latest stable version of Beats is 1.3.0, released on March 4, 2013.

This release is for all you swingers out there. A new Swing declaration in the song header will cause the song to be played with either a swung 8th note or swung 16th note rhythm. For example, take this song:

Song:
  Tempo: 120
  Flow:
    - Verse: x4

Verse:
- bass.wav:   X...X...X...X...
- snare.wav:  ....X.......X...
- hihat.wav:  X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.

It will sound like this.

You can add an 8th note swing like this (notice the 3rd line, everything else is the same):

Song:
  Tempo: 120
  Swing: 8   # Or, 16
  Flow:
    - Verse: x4

Verse:
- bass.wav:   X...X...X...X...
- snare.wav:  ....X.......X...
- hihat.wav:  X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.

And it will now sound like this.

This release also adds support for fractional tempos. For example:

Song:
  Tempo: 100.5
  Flow:
    - Verse: x4

This release also includes a small bug fix. When you run the beats command with no arguments, it now displays the help screen, rather than an error message.

To install the latest stable version (1.3.0) from rubygems.org, run the following from the command line:

gem install beats

Note that if you are installing using the default version of Ruby that comes with MacOS X, you might get a file permission error. If that happens, use sudo gem install beats instead. If you are using RVM, plain gem install beats should work fine.

Once installed, you can then run Beats from the command-line using the beats command.

Beats is not very useful unless you have some sounds to use with it. You can download some example sounds from http://beatsdrummachine.com.

Beats runs from the command-line. Run beats -h to see the available options. For more detailed instructions, visit https://github.com/jstrait/beats/wiki/Usage on the Beats Wiki.

The Beats wiki also has a Getting Started tutorial which shows how to create an example beat from scratch.

First, install the required dependencies:

bundle install

To run Beats locally, use bundle exec and run bin/beats, to avoid using any installed gem executable. For example:

bundle exec bin/beats -v

To run the tests:

bundle exec rake test

Contact me (Joel Strait) by sending a GitHub message or opening a GitHub issue.

Beats is released under the MIT license.