The History of Drum Machines, Samplers and Electronic Drums

Learn the rich history of drum machines

The history of drum machines and electronic drums is a really interesting one.

Whether you like it or not drum machines, electronic drums and samplers are not going away. At first they created very dodgy sounds and drummers viewed them as small threat to the much loved acoustic drum.

And although that love for acoustic drums is as strong as ever, we have made way in our hearts to embrace all that electronic drum sounds can add to our creative palette.

Early drum machines sound fairly pathetic to modern ears but whilst old school drummers laughed, other visionaries saw the potential.

Of course now it’s impossible to be a modern drummer in most genres without needing some level of understanding of drum machines, samplers or electronic drums.

But to get to the increasingly high level of the electronic drum world, there was a long journey to push boundaries, change mindsets and see what could be done with drum machines.

When were drum machines invented?

Below is a video recorded back in 2010 containing an audio recording with accompanying images from a chapter of the book The Drum: A History published in 2010. You can find it for you own country with a quick Google search but here are links for USA and UK.

It’s quite academic in style because the publisher of the book this is taken from wanted things that way. But for those that like this sort of thing then it might be of interest for the development of drum machines, electronic drums and samplers. We couldn’t cover absolutely everything in the book but we picked out what we considered to be the most important and/or relevant to drum kit players. But feel free to comment below on any other aspects that you find interesting that we couldn’t cover.