Create Drum Loops With Library of Congress’s Citizen Beats Web App
I’m not saying I’ll be the next Deadmau5, but the new Citizen DJ web app from the Library of Congress is great to play with even if you don’t think using any of it can create sick beats.
It’s not often that you can say “Library of Congress” and “Crazy Things” in the same sentence, but that’s it. This is how it works. You start by choosing one of the six collections you want to browse:
- Inventing entertainment
- Variety sound recordings and films
- Joe Smith Collection
- Free Music Archive
- American English dialect recordings
- National cinema
If you don’t know what you are looking for, or what these collections contain, it is best to simply “explore” them by clicking on this link. When you do this, you will be taken to a screen that looks like this:
The usefulness of this screen is somewhat random, but it allows you to preview tiny snippets of sounds in this collection. If you want to hear a larger sample, click the audio snippet and click the Play in Context button. You will get a little more, but these are not complete recordings of the sound in question, but only short snippets. As for the reason, it will become apparent when you click the Remix button, which will bring up this screen:
Yes, this is a complete sequencer. This is how it works. The shared audio you selected appears in the Select Item list, which you can change to whatever you want. It will be split on the sequencer along with a pre-filled beat pattern, which, again, you can change to several different defaults. Use the default drum machine or choose a new one from eight (!) General options, and then see how your remix sounds.
If you are not happy with the results, you can mute the instruments or parts of your sample. And, as always, you can click different squares to change the rhythm. Increase or decrease the tempo of the loop using the BPM slider, or randomly select it and use the shuffle buttons to let fate determine your loop.
The strangest thing about this – aside from its general concept – is that the loops automatically generated by the little Library of Congress application aren’t all that bad. At least of all the randomized cases I tested, I found only a few failures. It’s not bad at all. While I may not be making it the center of my next club track, Library of Congress’s random beats are a great way to develop that creativity. Or, heck, throw a quarantine dance party; the possibilities, like remixes, are endless.
Oh, what’s the best part? Everything is free. Load your beats. Upload your samples. Combine them in ways the Library of Congress never thought of.