Unique Excel Uses: Drum Machine

As someone who was a drummer in high school and college, this might be my favorite unique use of Excel yet. Dylan Tallchief has made an actual drum machine in an Excel spreadsheet. How cool is this?!

Who knew we'd be able to make music in Excel? It really is a miracle program. Watch the video below to see the drum machine in action.

The part of the video where Dylan gets into the description of getting the VBA code to work is especially interesting to me.

sleepTime = 60 / Range("C23").Value * 1000 / 4   '2 will need to change to 4 when i add more resolution
swingL = sleepTime + ((sleepTime / 5) * Range("C26"))
swingS = sleepTime - ((sleepTime / 5) * Range("C26"))

Below is a video of myself messing around with the sheet and showing you how to change the beats per minute (BPM aka tempo) or how to add a swing groove to the sequence.


This is one template you'll definitely want to try and play around with yourself. Download the drum machine spreadsheet for yourself using the link in Dylan's video.

I'll have to add drum machine to my list of unique uses for Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. If you have your own unique use of Excel please do let me know!