Hidden · found in the search · Drum designer

TC Stomp

Eight drum pads whose sounds you design: layers of tones and noise along curves you draw, through a filter and a drive.

Tempo
Swing
Volume
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TC Stomp drums designed from layers and curves

Accent
Tune
Level
Decay
Drive
Tune
Level
Decay
Drive
Tune
Level
Decay
Drive
Tune
Level
Decay
Drive
Tune
Level
Decay
Drive
Tune
Level
Decay
Drive
Tune
Level
Decay
Drive
Tune
Level
Decay
Drive
Bass drum: Ninety-Eight
Start
Length
Gain
Shape
Scatter
Phase
Pitch: 1.10 kHz → 43 HzPower bend 0.12: drag to bend, double-click for the other kindPower bend 0.60: drag to bend, double-click for the other kind0.0 ms: 1.10 kHz35 ms: 72 Hz320 ms: 43 Hz
Level: 0.0 dB → −∞Power bend 4.00: drag to bend, double-click for the other kind0.0 ms: 0.0 dB320 ms: −∞
Cutoff
Cutoff to
Reso
Drive
Bias
Tone
Out

Machines found

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  13. TC Stomp
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The others answer to their numbers in the search.

How to play it
  • Play starts the sequencer, and so does the space bar. A pattern chosen while it plays starts at the next bar.
  • Knobs turn when dragged up or down; hold Shift for small steps, double-click to put one back. With the keyboard: Tab to a knob, then the arrow keys. While the lab plays, a knob an LFO, a duck or the song moves turns with it, and a mark on its ring stays where you set it; a knob the song's lane holds is framed in green.
  • Undo: Ctrl+Z takes back the last change to the lab, a run of changes without a pause being one step, and Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y) puts it back; ↶ and ↷ on the rack's bar do the same. A right-click on a region, a note, a lane's point, a track's name or a channel gives what can be done to it. ? shows every key.
  • Parts: every machine has sixteen, A–P, each played from its own steps or from a piano roll; the letters under its name choose the one it plays and shows. Give it a name, and Save as new part copies it, steps, roll and all, to the first free part and goes on there, so a pattern you made is kept to use in the song. Solo lets only that machine be heard: with Patterns on, it loops the part you are writing.
  • Piano roll: Steps or Roll beside a machine's parts says how that part is written. In the roll, a double click on the grid puts a note there (with ✎, press and drag to draw one as long as the drag); press a note to choose it, drag it to move it or its end to lengthen it, double-click it away; with a note chosen, the arrow keys move it and Shift with them lengthens it. The grid is a quarter down to a thirty-second, or triplets; a clip is 1 to 512 bars, and in the song a region as long as its clip plays it through once. Velocities are under the notes, lanes for the machine's own knobs under those. Read MIDI takes a MIDI file's track (its controllers 74, 71, 1 and 72 become lanes, its pitch bends a Pitch bend lane), Save MIDI writes the clip out with its bend, and with Rec on, what you play while the lab runs is written in.
  • Pitch bend: every synth and the TC Sampler bends, every note sounding and every new one, as a keyboard's wheel does. Bend on its panel says how far, 1 to 24 semitones up and down (2 to start). A MIDI keyboard's wheel bends the machine touched last. In a roll, a Pitch bend lane bends it through the clip, the middle no bend; draw a swoop down for a hoover. An LFO on Pitch bend, at a small depth, is vibrato.
  • Step programs: beside a machine's parts, a list of programs to put into the part chosen (‹ › go through them; Undo puts the steps back): the lab's own, with the riffs and beats of the band's remix kits, yours, and the site's. Save steps… keeps yours in this browser, Export and Open… take them as a file, and Share… puts them on the step programs.
  • Pads sound a drum and choose it; its steps and knobs are shown. With Rec on, pads struck while the pattern plays are written into it.
  • WAV records whole bars of what plays, from the start of a bar, and saves them as a WAV file that loops.
  • MIDI: in browsers that have it, the MIDI button lets a keyboard play the machines. Channel 10 strikes the drums by General MIDI's drum notes; the other channels play the machine touched last, and a TC-303 note struck hard is written with an accent. Controllers 74, 71, 1 and 72 turn the cutoff, resonance, envelope and decay of the machine touched last, where it has them, and the pitch wheel bends it; Start and Stop start and stop the lab.

Every sound is made in your browser as it plays, from the lab's own arithmetic, the band's remix kit and what you load yourself, which is never sent anywhere. What you make is kept in this browser and follows you from machine to machine. The band's studio had machines of these kinds from its first synthesizer in 1997 on; each machine's page says which, and what was made with them. Everything else is in the manual.

About TC Stomp

How it is built

A pad's sound is up to six layers, each a tone (sine, triangle, saw or square) or noise, sounding from its start to its end, its pitch and its level moving along curves: points joined by bends. One filter takes the layers sent through it; then come a drive, a last low-pass, a fade, and Fit, which puts the sound's peak at -1 dBFS. The sound is rendered once each time it is changed and played on every hit. The eight pads are a bass drum, a snare, a hand clap, two toms, closed and open hi-hats and an effect; a new hit of the bass drum, the snare or a tom cuts the last short, and the closed hi-hat cuts the open one.

How to use it

  1. Strike a pad to hear it and choose it; its design opens under the pads.
  2. Start from one of the lab's designs, then drag the curves' points, add a layer, and choose its wave or noise.
  3. Set the filter, the drive and the fade; the pad's Tune moves its pitch an octave either way, Decay stretches its level curves and Tone drives it.
  4. Light its steps and press Play, as on the other drum machines; the sound can be saved as a WAV file of its own.
  5. Or put a sample of your own on a pad with Load a sample… (a WAV, AIFF or MP3; its first 10 seconds): Tune, Decay and Tone work on it as on a design, it is kept in your browser, and Use the design gives the pad its design back.

In the studio

A program for designing drums in this way was in the band's studio by 1998: the bass drums of Atomic Dance Explosion were made with it.

Everything else, the rack, the arranger, the mixer and saving your work, is in the lab's manual.