Drum Machine

Drum Machine The drum machine or beat box started as a simple studio tool but became an integral part of hip-hop culture in the early 1980s. As Malcolm McLaren noted on the sleeve to his early hip-hop hit “Buffalo Gals,” all a kid needed to create this new style of music was a pair of decks to scratch records and a drum machine to pump out a beat. By the mid-1980s musicians unions were up in arms at the thought of drum machines making traditional, “real” drummers redundant. But at the same time…