# Wired Wednsday – Rise & Fall of The Drum Machine - Link: https://exclusiveaccess.net/wired-wednsday-rise-fall-of-the-drum-machine/ - Published: 2011-07-06T10:36:11-04:00 - Author: EAN “rhythm regularity” — the degree to which rhythm in an MP3 file differs between consecutive 16-second sections. With a human drummer, you’d expect the rhythm to vary, even if only a little. With a drum machine, however, the beat shouldn†™t err in the slightest. For each year since 1965, Mauch plotted the proportion of songs in the charts that featured high, medium or low rhythmic regularity. Clicking through to the graph, you can see that rhythmic regularity (and therefore drum machine usage) [peaked during the ’80s and early ’90s](http://blog.last.fm/images/148.png), but has since fallen off again. “What could have fueled this trend?” asks Mauch. “One obvious suspect is the introduction of new technology. We have marked the release date of the first widely used drum machine, the Roland CR-78 in ‘78, and the first influential digital sampler, the Linn LM-1 in 1980 in the figure. We can’t prove the connection but it’s certainly a striking coincidence.”   Mauch also [plotted the tempo of songs](http://blog.last.fm/images/149.png) released in the same period, finding a strong peak at exactly 120 beats per minute in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “Our first thought was that songwriters in the â €™80s must have turned on their drum machines, loved what they heard and wrote a song to that beat — without changing the default tempo setting of 120 bpm,” he says, though then disproves that by examining the KLF’s knack for musical soothsaying. Perhaps most interesting is the way tempo has changed over time, shifting from two peaks at 170 and 100 bpm in the ’60s, decreasing to 135 in the ’70s, 120 in the ’80s and 100 in the ’90s, before sinking further while a new peak emerges at 170 bpm again in the early ’00s. Perhaps music is cyclical after all. For the full gory details of the analysis and more histograms about dance music than we’ve ever seen in one place, head to the official Last.fm blog for Mauchâ €™s three-part “Anatomy of the U.K. Charts” series: “[Percussiveness and the Disco Diva](http://blog.last.fm/2011/06/16/percussiveness-and-the-disco-diva), ” “[Clash of Attitudes](http://blog.last.fm/2011/06/23/anatomy-of-the-uk-charts-part-2-clash-of-attitudes) ” and “[The Curse of the Drum Machine](http://blog.last.fm/2011/07/01/anatomy-of-the-uk-charts-part-3-the-curse-of-the-drum-machine). ” Wired UK also put together a [gallery of vintage drum machines](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/04/lastfm-drum-machines/viewgallery) for your perusal.