Spectrum Computing

I've emailed the author to ask how he got those numbers. If he replies I'll follow up here.

I've checked his book, but that chapter doesn't seem to have any obvious references to say where that info came from.

It might be from a magazine at the time, maybe misremembered? Then again he might mean something completely different. Either way I'm interested to hear from him because on his website he talks about using the SpecDrum in the early 90s for some demos.

I got a reply from Simon Goodwin, and I'll post more details once I get a chance to reply to him.

Long story short - the 7 bit kick and 6 bit samples isn't entirely accurate, but it is an ideal way of handling the samples because if you keep the volume lower on the other two groups it means you can have a nice loud kick that will cut through the mix without clipping or rolling over.

Also, I made another kit - this time it's an 808.

Demo
Kit TZX
Song TZX

I took an interest in the Specdrum a few years ago and made my own beatboxing Specdrum kit. I got all of the information I needed from Crash magazines, written by Simon back in the day. I got in touch with him and he sent me some related software to backup.

Out of interest, have you seen the Specdrum System II tape software? It allows proper live playing of all drums at one time, with 8 keys. It adds a slightly different twist to the Specdrum.

Yeah, the drums are basically suitable volumes to be played in their allowed combinations. Looking at the figures in the original samples hex, the range goes from around -50 to +50, with the bass not being much louder than the rest of them to be honest.

Are you still using your Specdrum?

Have you seen this http://www.thesadsongco.com/blog.php?blog_id=18 Search for Specdrum in the blog page.