Stochastik Drum Programming (Sneak Preview)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpbLrwhDMC4

This is a preview of Stochastik – a new iPad drum machine app that features stochastic playback of your drum patterns.

Stochastik lets you set a probability that a note will trigger for each of the steps in your pattern. Once you add chance into the mix, one loop can generate thousands of variations

Hundreds of samples are included. Plus, you can import your own samples through iTunes File Sharing, Dropbox or email.

Features:

  • Stochastic Drum Programming
  • Over a thousand included drum, cymbal and percussion sounds
  • Unlimited Patterns and Songs
  • Import custom samples through iTunes File Sharing, Email and the Dropbox iPad App
  • AudioCopy & Pasteboard — use your drum patterns in GarageBand, Beat Maker and other compatible apps
  • WIST — Wirelessly Sync Stochastik with other iOS devices
  • Precise Entry of exact quantities for maximum control over volume, pan, bpm and shuffle
  • Share your patterns, kits and songs with Email, iTunes File Sharing and the Dropbox iPad App.
  • 15 Samples, 32 Voices
  • Touch pads on sequencer screen
  • Sliders instead of knobs
  • Check out the YouTube Channel for more.
Stochastik is currently under review in for the App Store and will sell for $4.99 when it is available.

16 thoughts on “Stochastik Drum Programming (Sneak Preview)

  1. Nifty little fokker, should make idm’ers happy?! my only questions are, is that the sequencer’s resolution of the program or can it get a little more fine grained….secondly, for 5 bucks i do expect some sort of midi capabilities…..

    1. How so? The musician still must program it with care so that patterns stay “inbound” of their aesthetic tastes. In some sense, I’d imagine that could be more challenging than having precise control.

  2. This looks like a great app to jam along with. I love to play off of sporadic cymbal crashes and such.There is another similar app, but recent updates made it basically unusable for me. This particular app looks simple much nicer. The only thing I’m curious about is that it likely uses a uniform number generator to calculate the probability of a sample triggering (which implies trigger events are mutually exclusive from other events). What about using more complex stochastic processes like martingales, Markov chains and Poisson processes?

    1. Thanks for the kind words. I hope you like the app when it comes out. You’re right in that prior events do not effect the probability that a note will trigger. I know that we can have compound priors as a way of preserving the markov property, but I couldn’t figure out a simple UI for it. In the future I may work on ways of creating a stanza or motif so you can say “this all happens or none of it happens”. For future work, I would like to explore the idea of chaining melodic motifs together with a variable transition potential, but that would be another app (likely called Markov Motif or similar.)

  3. As someone who spends a great deal of time adding detail to drum beats, this looks like a fascinating tool. I’m curious to give it a shot, especially would love to check out song mode. I like bring a good number of drum sounds/samples in and out of the music; it seems like Stochastic would be able to do that, but would have to give it the run through to see how practical that would be.

    I’d like to see a couple of additional items on this – 1. I’d love to see the sporadic element added to velocity so you could add some variation to a single beat. 2. For that matter, how about Stochastic programming on sonic elements like effects or filter? This could be a bit of a mess, but might be interesting. 3. How about virtual MIDI? This looks like an awesome app to have running in the background or triggering another sound source.

    Either way, will definitely be checking this out!

    1. Thanks for the kind words, I hope you like it when it comes out. You can make it so that the chance effects the volume of the triggered note, so your less-frequently triggering notes are more like “ghost notes” than accents. Virtual MIDI (sync, note out) is coming in the first update.

      I am very interested in the whole space of generative music that fits within the composer’s defined constraints. Working on sending MIDI CCs and melodic sequences is something I am interested in as a research topic, but probably outside of the scope of Stochastik.

  4. I find this very interesting, and a great first step down this technology road. It would be great to have some filters for the randomness that could be adjusted to allow more/less in various areas of a live performance. As it stands it could also be a great way to quickly generate a lot of variety in percussion parts that could be arranged later in a more thoughtful approach.

    Anyhow, cool stuff worth checking out.

  5. this looks very cool! a bit more like playing together with a “real” drummer. 🙂 there are things i’d like, though, such as the ability to program variations of the probabilities on each pattern. so one patch can have 8 different patterns or so. makes it easier for changing patterns mid-song.

    and why no midi? i’m not paying $5 for a music app without midi. this needs to be able to sync with tempo from other apps, aswell as output midi triggers.

  6. watched some more videos and see i’m wrong on the pattern things. the app organizes stuff into songs, where you can build a kit for each song. you can then add many patterns to that song. (you need to open a sub-menu to change patterns, though. i wouldn’t like working with that)

    add core midi and tap tempo to this app and it’s an insta-buy! 🙂

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