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Open Beat Box : A Virtual Drum Machine

Table of Contents
Introduction
Copyright
License
Portability
Installation
Known Bugs
Fuses
Running OBB

Introduction

Open Beat Box (OBB) is a virtual drum machine. It is a program to make songs with music sample in loops instead of the traditional method with scores and instruments.

This is our fifth public release. This release is more like the goal we are heading for. We mostly worked on re-manipulating code putting away the pattern demo and focussed on the serious stuff.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

Portability

We want OBB to be portable. We have been reported that OBB runs on GNU/Linux, Windows and IRIX. As far as we know, OBB should run on most flavors of UNIX, on Windows and on Mac. We are really interested in volunteers to test source snapshots on any of those OS. Even if you don't want to test snapshots, if you successfully launched OBB on any OS other than GNU/Linux and Windows, please let us know.

Installation

OBB now runs on officially runs on Windows and UNIX so we kicked installation instructions from this README. See INSTALL-GNU-Linux.txt for GNU/Linux instructions and INSTALL-Windows.txt for Windows instructions. There is also an unofficial INSTALL-IRIX.txt out there...

Known Bugs

We prefer to have only a few features but to be mostly bug free. There are a few bugs that we did not fixed at the moment for various reasons. Most likely we left them there even though we know they exists because they are part of modules that will be completely rewritten in future versions.

We know the existence of the following bugs :

OBB won't prompt you for saving when you quit.
There's a glitch when mouse-scrolling on the panning widget

Fuses

Under no circumstances the OBB development team will sell you fuses. We are not associated with anybody responding to "Messenger". We really super desperately need new propaganda for our hate campaign. : D

The OBB development team would like to remind you that you should never go outside late at night with a 12 gauge shotgun looking for a messenger without the supervision of a parent.

Running OBB

There is a script called obb in the directory where you found this README. Just run it :
sh obb

or: ./obb

on UNIX or click on the file OBB.py in the src directory on Windows.

The green buttons with the weird shape at the right of the eight holder bars are the hit buttons. The diamond shaped ones on the left of the tool bar are the command buttons. You can click play now. The red flashing lights indicate which hit buttons are being played.

Each holder bar has a different sound but all the hit buttons on the same holder bar plays the same sound. Click on a hit button to activate it. It will be brighter. The red light will record it's state a few "hits" before it pass on it and OBB will play the sound at this position.

The button with the speaker on it preview the sample loaded on it's holder bar. You can change the settings of this holder bar by clicking on the "settings" button. It the one next to "preview". You can change this sample by clicking on the button with a folder on it.

The slider next to the "open" button is the balance slider you can adjust on witch stereo channel you want the sample to play.

You can change the tempo with the amber spinbox. It supports mouse wheel, it's the fastest way to change it quickly. You can change the master output volume by dragging the handle on the slider next to the tempo spinbox.

When you are happy with your pattern, click on the floppy to save it with the name scrolling around or on the floppy with the ugly blurry arrow to change it's name. If you have messed up your pattern and would like to start from scratch, hit the white page button.

That's about it for now. We have to implement the rest of the functionalities. How did you like it ? We'd like to ear from your impressions.

Please contact us : http://openbeatbox.org/contact .

Thank you for trying OBB !