Rhythm Box

A simple drum-machine/rhythm-box for OVOS - loops an 8-step (eighth- note) beat pattern at a chosen tempo. All 4 drum sounds (kick, snare, closed hi-hat, open hi-hat) are generated, not recorded - nothing to source or license (see scripts/generate_drums.py). Same timing philosophy as ovos-skill-metronome: a background thread scheduling each step from a fixed accumulator, extended to a step-sequencer instead of a single click.

Early 0.0.x release. Only 2 patterns (rock, four-on-the-floor) for now, deliberately kept small to prove the sequencing engine before building a genre library - see "Planned patterns" below.

Usage

"play a rock beat at 100 bpm"
"play a disco beat"
"start a drum loop"
"stop the beat"
"spil et rock beat på 100 bpm"    (Danish)
"stop beatet"                     (Danish)

Bare "start a drum loop" resumes the last pattern/tempo used this session, or a 120 bpm rock beat if nothing has been played yet. Valid range is 40-220 bpm.

The two patterns

Both are an 8-step grid (one bar of eighth notes):

Planned patterns (tracked as issues, not built yet)

• Swing/shuffle - needs a different timing model (triplet feel), not just a new hit-pattern on the existing straight-eighth grid.
• Funk, latin/bossa, half-time - half-time is cheap (reuses the existing 4-sample palette); funk/latin likely need more samples.

A real caveat: simultaneous hits

Some steps hit more than one instrument at once (kick + hi-hat on beat 1, for example). Each is sent as a separate play_audio() call in quick succession - this relies on the OVOS audio backend actually mixing overlapping playback rather than one call cutting off the previous. Most real setups do mix correctly (PulseAudio/PipeWire-level mixing), but if a beat sounds thin or clipped on a given deployment, this is a real, known reason why - not something silently assumed away.

Install

pip install ovos-skill-rhythm-box

Development

See DEVELOPMENT.md.

Category

Entertainment

Tags

#music #drums #rhythm #beat