The Drum Machine of Tao

Xiaowan Yi; Mathieu Barthet

• Format: poster
• Session: posters-3
• Paper link

Abstract:

The Drum Machine of Tao (Tao) is a machine learning-based digital system that returns a sampled drum loop in audio waveform to sequencer parameters and one-shot percussive samples, restoring low-level editability to the drum loops that would otherwise be frozen once sampled. The philosophy behind the design of this drum machine is inspired from Taoism - that which returns to its primal state is the great Way of Tao. In this paper, we introduce the system design of Tao which comprises a state-of-the-art drum source separation model, a sequencer parameter estimation model, and a bespoke one-shot sample extraction algorithm.