Spent a good day working on the project today, and made a few decisions about the design. While looking back at the initial, web-based version of this drum machine, I remembered that the most pleasing thing about the interface was changing multiple parameters at once, by touching the different sliders on the touchscreen. This was previously something I had decided to sacrifice for this physical version, in favour of having one big potentiometer whose function could be changed by pressing different combinations of buttons.

Today I decided to experiment on the breadboard with three potentiometers, and only five buttons instead of seven, and it definitely felt nicer, so I'm going to carry on with that layout for now - I think it will look just as good (if not better) when translated into a new case design, and will only raise the component cost by £1 or so (although I've said that about a few components recently, so it's probably time to do another cost check soon).

I've also spent quite a bit of time on the code today, implementing a system which loads two copies of each audio sample, allowing them to overlap with each other. Before I added this feature, a loud bass drum followed immediately by a very quiet one would cause an annoying "click" sound as its signal was suddenly attenuated by the quieter sample which replaced it.

This system is working nicely, but it is a bit more processor-intensive and has consequently caused me to get rid of the resonant filter effect. Analogue filters are really cool, but this was a fairly weedy-sounding digital filter, and I don't think it's any great loss.

To show where I've got to so far, I recorded a sample of how DrumKid sounds in its current state. The following recording starts off "clean", with no additional bit-crush effect, although it's still pretty crunchy (a feature not a bug!). I begin by adjusting the "hyperactivity" parameter to modulate how many extra hits are added to the basic beat. Then I start to increase the bit crush effect while also modulating the pitch of the samples. The only post-processing I added to the recording was a low-pass filter, because I could still hear a faint high signal (Mozzi's carrier signal?) which I haven't successfully filtered out on the breadboard yet.

Here's the recording: 

https://soundcloud.com/mattbradshaw/drumkid-test-audio-1