Mar 27, 2021 15:00:00

I tried using 'The Infinite Drum Machine', a web application developed by Google that allows you to freely arrange and beat everyday sounds.

The Infinite Drum Machine , a web app created by members of the

Google Creative Lab that studies AI, allows you to create drum patterns using everyday sounds such as 'glass bumping sounds' and 'human sneezing.' .. I actually used 'The Infinite Drum Machine' to easily chop the beat.

The Infinite Drum Machine
https://experiments.withgoogle.com/ai/drum-machine/view/

From the top page of 'The Infinite Drum Machine', click 'START PLAYING' to open the drum pattern creation screen.

The drum pattern creation screen looks like this. A myriad of dots and four circles are displayed at the top, and a drum pattern editing area is located at the bottom.

When you move the four circles, the sound registered at the point located in the center of the circle will play. This time, the sound of 'CASE BEER' was heard.

In 'The Infinite Drum Machine', different sounds are assigned to each of the innumerable displayed points, and you can select the sound to be used for the drum pattern by moving the four circles. Among the assigned sounds are the sounds of 'PENCIL SHARPENER' ...

It contains a lot of sounds that overflow in everyday life, such as 'HUMAN COUGH'.

In the drum pattern editing area, you can switch the sound on and off by clicking the displayed point. You can create a drum pattern using four types of sounds with intuitive operations.

Also, on the right side of the drum editing area, there are buttons for randomly selecting sounds and buttons for changing the tempo of the drum pattern.

In the movie below, you can see how 'The Infinite Drum Machine' is actually creating drum patterns using various sounds.

I played with 'The Infinite Drum Machine', which creates rhythms with everyday sounds-YouTube


In addition, a movie explaining the process of creating 'The Infinite Drum Machine' has been released by the development team.

AI Experiments: The Infinite Drum Machine-YouTube


According to the development team, 'The Infinite Drum Machine' was created in the process of research that makes AI recognize 'sound-to-sound similarity.'

The development team prepared more than 1000 unlabeled sounds and trained AI to learn 'how to organize sounds.'

For this learning, 't-SNE ', an algorithm that visualizes the degree of similarity, was used.

As a result of the learning, AI output a polyhedron in which similar sounds are arranged close to each other.

The development team converted this polyhedron into a plane and 'released it as'The Infinite Drum Machine'so that anyone can play it.' After learning about the production process of 'The Infinite Drum Machine' in the movie, playing again, the innumerable sounds arranged on the screen are roughly classified by color, for example, glass and metal in the blue zone. You can see that similar sounds are arranged nearby, such as a lot of high-pitched sounds from inorganic substances such as, and sounds made by people and animals in the green zone.