Introducing – Steve

by Administrator on Oct.10, 2009, under Steve

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When my band went into the studio this past year to record we had the intent of making a very layered recording.  For me this meant a lot of drum beats, both played live and programmed via drum machines.   We’ve always been into layering, it’s part of our sound, but this time around we went overboard (in a good way – i think).   The band started giving me a hard time, that I was coming up with too many beats and that I was working myself into a hole that come tour I would not be able to pull myself out of.  Well I told them not to worry, that I was building a robot drummer to help me out and as usual – they just laughed.

Months earlier I had shown Josh Caldwell, an old friend of mine who was a mechanical engineering student, an idea I had for a mechanical drumming device (this was pretty much a few parts from the hardware store thrown together to get the idea across).   Well to my own disbelief he called me a few weeks later and told me to meet him for lunch at Health Camp, he had something to show me.  I get to lunch and he’s there with a friend of his, Eli Hernandez (another engineer) and a completely redesigned, much improved 3D computer model of the mechanical drumming device.  I was so stoked.

Well life got away from us and months later we still hadn’t really messed with anything.  Around mid-summer though I started getting nervous about the prospect of touring without any backup beats, so I gave Josh and Eli a call and we got to work (really I should say they got to work).  We spent the next two months out at Texas State Technical College building parts, testing, prototyping and just having good old fashion machine fun.  I bought a MIDI decoding circuit kit from John at Highly Liquid to convert MIDI to electronic on/off pulses and built it into an old headphone splitter box I had found at a thrift store.

The band was pretty amazed, I must say, when I showed up for tour with Steve in tow.  He came strong with the beats even though he can be a bit stiff at times, but you have to admire his resilience.  There has been some question as to the name “Steve” and where it comes from.  Well thats another story for another time.

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13 Comments for this entry

  • Charlie
    October 12th, 2009 on 3:35 am

    I said this on Facebook, but I want to make sure that you read this.

    “I must say, that I’m not too thrilled about ‘Steve’. Sure, robotics is nice, but me personally seeing B-Wack up there actually doing drums…just seems right. Now I must say that I haven’t actually seen Steve in concert, but I think those two clips is good enough. B-Wack (or if someone from the band could tell B-Wack), you have alot of amazing … Read Moretalents (such as drumming and making cool stuff) and you should defintely use them for God! And I think you look more passionate in your drumming for God when youre actually doing it yourself! I don’t mean to be harsh, but I just want to say whats on my heart.”

  • Irving
    October 12th, 2009 on 7:07 am

    My God, Bwack! You keep amazing me!

  • RangerWez
    October 12th, 2009 on 1:31 pm

    BTW … to get rid of the “stiffness” through some randomization into the velocity parameter of the MIDI files … not much, but just a little … it won’t change the beat per se, but it will change how hard “Steve” hits the drums (if the mechanics will handle it)

  • Kris
    October 12th, 2009 on 2:53 pm

    @ charlie: The point of the robot is to do the beats that B-wack is not doing. B-wack still drums, but there is so much going on that Steve is needed to here the same song in concert that you have heard on the cd. Simply amazing.

  • Topher
    October 12th, 2009 on 4:00 pm

    I went to a DCB concert on Oct 10 with my fiancee and David introduced Steve to us… I thought he was an awesome addition and te beats were really great with B-wack and Steve together. Great show!!!

  • cory
    October 12th, 2009 on 6:38 pm

    I think God is glorified when we use the talents he has given us for His glory. Using Steve to play things that would not be humanly possible (for whatever reason) to reproduce in a live setting is no different than Bwack using his MacBook and Ableton Live to trigger loops that provide synth leads and pads that the band does not have to be responsible for.

    Keep up the good work, Bwack. Very impressive.

  • Nakia
    October 12th, 2009 on 10:52 pm

    this is so cool, can you build me one??
    Is it solenoids??

  • Chris Caldwell
    October 15th, 2009 on 2:32 am

    I have heard of such things, but never have I seen them come together like this! Steve is an awesome addition! Can’t wait to see what you do with him next… assuming steve is a male by the way…

  • Geoff
    November 5th, 2009 on 4:34 pm

    I’d like to buy one, how much??????

  • Alise
    November 19th, 2009 on 11:05 am

    Pure genius. Now to determine if it’s evil genius, or just the regular kind…

  • James
    November 23rd, 2009 on 10:22 pm

    Hi any updates it’s been a while

  • James
    November 23rd, 2009 on 10:22 pm

    hi any updates its been a while

  • David Purcell
    December 16th, 2009 on 10:44 am

    Dudes whats with the updates, there isn’t any can you guys give us all an update??

    cheers

    David

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