Roland’s portable TR-6S replicates classic ’80s drum machines on a budget

Roland has unveiled a pair of drum machines that recreate sounds from classic models like the TR-606 and TR-909, updated with modern features like real-time recording. The first model is the $400 TR-6S Rhythm Performer (above), essentially a smaller...

Making Music with Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel has long been one of the most popular pieces of business software, and is used by pretty much every company on the planet to create spreadsheets, databases, charts, tables, and financial models. It also can be used to play video games. Now, it turns out it can make music as well.

Using custom Visual Basic macros and buttons, musician Dylan Tallchief was able to create a working drum machine sequencer that works right Excel. The trick is that it generates MIDI signals and sends them to either a virtual synthesizer on your computer, or to an external MIDI device. Check it out in action in the video below:

If you’ve got Excel 2019 or Office 365 and want to give this thing a whirl, you can download the Excel Drum Machine spreadsheet on Google Drive, and if you enjoy what you heard, consider supporting Dylan on Patreon.