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.
96 Comments for this entry
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David Crowder*Band – Oh, Happiness « MantrA[S2]
October 12th, 2009 on 3:05 pm[...] For those of you who love to follow along, DCB has a new member of the band: Steve3PO. Here’s Bwack’s post on him in [...]
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Auto-drummer - Hack a Day
November 13th, 2009 on 9:15 pm[...] a cup of mechanical engineering with a dash of drum set and you end up with Steve, the robotic drummer. We know that it uses an MSA-T Midi Decoder but that’s about the extent of what has been [...]
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Auto-Drummer « JWstudios
November 15th, 2009 on 10:14 am[...] a cup of mechanical engineering with a dash of drum set and you end up withSteve, the robotic drummer. We know that it uses an MSA-T Midi Decoder but that’s about the extent of what has been shared. [...]
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Create Digital Music » Steve_3po and Other Robotic Drummers
December 29th, 2009 on 7:10 pm[...] Introducing – Steve [...]
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Steve_3po and Other Robotic Drummers | uptownboogiedown
December 29th, 2009 on 8:25 pm[...] Introducing – Steve [...]
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Round-Up: Robotic Drummers, Robotic Percussion | websla.com
January 2nd, 2010 on 7:46 pm[...] Introducing – Steve [...]
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A not so complete list of robot music instruments and automated instruments | Sonic Robots
May 12th, 2012 on 12:29 am[...] Jeremy Bush, drummer of the christian rock band “David Crowder Band” developed this fully functioning pneumatic drumbot called “Steve 3PO” with engineers Josh Caldwell and Eli Hernandez. Link [...]
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