5 projects
A 909 snare is two tones at 180 and 330 Hz and a burst of highpassed noise, and the tones decay faster than the noise, so every hit stops being a drum and becomes a hiss at some moment. Measured off the sound, that moment is 84 ms at half snappy, 203 at a quarter, and never arrives at full because the noise leads from the first millisecond. The two decays predict 91 and 202. Play it, or let it play the two and four.
A clap is four bursts of noise 10 ms apart and a tail. A drum machine gates one noise source, so every burst is fresh. A sampler layers one burst on itself, so every burst is the same noise, and a sound that repeats every 10 ms wears a comb of peaks every 100 Hz. Measured: the copied clap repeats exactly and its comb is 23 dB deep, the fresh one never comes closer than a third of the way and has no comb at all. Same envelope, same ear, different spectrum.
A 909 hat is six square waves at 205, 254, 370, 304, 523 and 800 Hz, frequencies picked to share no period. Measured by sliding the sound against itself, the closest it ever comes to repeating is 49% different. Snap the same six onto a 50 Hz grid and it repeats exactly every 20 ms, and a tone appears where the metal was. Play it, tune it, or let it play house hats.
The 808 is one sine with a pitch envelope. It starts at 147 Hz and lands on 49 in 155 ms, and the tail takes 2.4 s to fall 60 dB. A phone speaker plays 1% of it, and 84% of that is the first 50 ms. Clipping it hard buys the phone under 3 dB. Playing it an octave up buys 10. Play it on the keys, or let it play itself.
Noise has a colour, and the colour is a number: white is flat, pink falls 3 dB an octave, brown falls 6, measured. A hi-hat is what noise is for, and the 808's is six square waves chosen to share no harmonic. How little pitch that leaves is a number too, 45% for the six and 16% for the finished hat.