The Drum Machine of Tao

Xiaowan Yi, and Mathieu Barthet

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

The Drum Machine of Tao (Tao) is a machine learning–based system that reverse-engineers sequencer parameters and one-shot percussive samples from drum loops, restoring low-level editability to sampled loops that would otherwise be frozen in audio waveforms. The philosophy behind this system is inspired from Taoism: that which returns to its primal state is the great Way of Tao. In this paper, we present the system design of Tao, which includes a state-of-the-art drum source separation model, a sequencer parameter estimation model, and a bespoke one-shot sample extraction algorithm that leverages differentiable audio synthesis. Results from a prototype are available for listening.

Citation

Xiaowan Yi, and Mathieu Barthet. 2025. The Drum Machine of Tao. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15698954 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@article{nime2025_79,
 abstract = {The Drum Machine of Tao (Tao) is a machine learning–based system that reverse-engineers sequencer parameters and one-shot percussive samples from drum loops, restoring low-level editability to sampled loops that would otherwise be frozen in audio waveforms. The philosophy behind this system is inspired from Taoism: that which returns to its primal state is the great Way of Tao. In this paper, we present the system design of Tao, which includes a state-of-the-art drum source separation model, a sequencer parameter estimation model, and a bespoke one-shot sample extraction algorithm that leverages differentiable audio synthesis. Results from a prototype are available for listening.},
 address = {Canberra, Australia},
 articleno = {79},
 author = {Xiaowan Yi and Mathieu Barthet},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15698954},
 editor = {Doga Cavdir and Florent Berthaut},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 numpages = {4},
 pages = {545--548},
 title = {The Drum Machine of Tao},
 track = {Paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2025/nime2025_79.pdf},
 year = {2025}
}