DRUM · MAILBOX · async sibling of /drum-live-bus · pattern lives in the URL
Letters, not phone calls.
If the live-drum register is "drum together in the same room right now", this is the other half — leave each other something to find later. Six surfaces that share one trick: the whole drum pattern fits inside the URL. No accounts. No server-side state. Just a link you can paste into iMessage, a DM, a bio, anywhere.
Four things you can do here: compose new phrases (bottle, call-and-response, octet), derive phrases from existing ones (genesis), curate a set of phrases into a mixtape (medley), and keep a history of everything you've made or received (shelf). Open any share-link → hear the drum. Send it back with your reply or remix.
Drum Bottle
single phrase · 12 chars · send
Record a 4-bar phrase in a 4×16 grid. The pattern + BPM encodes as 9 bytes — 12 base64url characters of URL. Paste it anywhere a link works; recipient opens it, hears it, can record a reply and send it back.
Open →Drum Call & Response
two halves · 24 chars · channel back forth
Two stacked grids — a CALL and a RESPONSE. Record your call, send the link. They open it, hear it loop, add their answer in the second grid, send it back. The final URL plays call → response → call → response as one back-and-forth.
Open →Drum Octet
1..8 beats · 6..24 chars · polylogue
A chain of one beat each, up to eight people. You see what came before, add your beat, pass the link on. After round eight the chain is sealed and loops as one 8-beat phrase eight strangers built together — none of them in the same room, none online at the same time.
Open →Drum Genesis
remix · combinator · A ⊕ B = C
Paste two bottle URLs, pick an operator (XOR, AND, OR, INTERLEAVE), and the page derives a new phrase. The result is itself a valid bottle URL — copy it and send it like any other. The recipe URL preserves the lineage so friends can remix differently.
Open →Drum Medley
curate · 1..4 bottles · mini-mixtape
Pick up to four drum-bottles — each stays at its own BPM. Press play and the medley loops through them in order. Copy the link and send the whole mixtape as one URL (max 48 base64url chars). Recipients can edit, remix, re-export.
Open →Drum Shelf
local-only · 100 max · returnable
Every bottle or call-and-response you copy or receive lands here, in your browser's localStorage. Newest-first list of mini-grid previews. Open old phrases, re-share, replay. Never leaves your device.
Open →One trick, six shapes
Every surface here turns a drum pattern into a base64url URL. The shortest is /drum-bottle at 9 bytes → 12 chars. Both /drum-call-and-response and a sealed 8-beat /drum-octet top out at 18 bytes → 24 chars. A full /drum-medley with 4 bottles weighs in at 36 bytes → 48 chars. The whole musical message — whether one phrase or a four-track mixtape — fits in a tweet, an iMessage preview, a chat sidebar.
This works because:
- 4 voices × 16 cells × 1 bit = 64 bits per phrase. That's 8 bytes.
- BPM in 1 byte (offset from 40, range 40–220).
- Base64url turns binary into URL-safe characters at 3 bytes → 4 chars.
/drum-octetuses a smaller per-beat shape (4 voices × 4 cells = 2 bytes) so eight contributors still fit in the same 24-character budget./drum-medleyconcatenates up to 4 bottles back-to-back — each one keeps its own BPM, so the mixtape can shift tempo from track to track.
Each share-link also carries a ?from=<pid> param — the first 4 chars of the sender's sha256(session-id), the same handle the live register uses. Stable across the sender's devices, non-identifying. Over weeks of trading bottles you'll start to recognise abcd's drumming style without ever knowing their real name. In an octet, the ?from=a-b-c-d-... chain is itself the credits.
Four kinds of work happen across the register:
- Compose — write new phrases. The monologue/dialogue/polylogue ladder: /drum-bottle, /drum-call-and-response, /drum-octet.
- Derive — transform existing phrases. /drum-genesis takes two bottle URLs and combines them bitwise (XOR, AND, OR, INTERLEAVE). The result is itself a bottle.
- Curate — group phrases into a set. /drum-medley stacks 1..4 bottles into one mini-mixtape URL.
- Store — keep a history. /drum-shelf remembers every phrase you've copied or received, kind-aware previews, jukebox playback across the whole list.
Sister directories: /drum-live-bus (5 synchronous-drum surfaces · live), /drum-pavilion (5 meditative-drum screensavers · ambient), /cast-table (32 single-user music tools · solo). Also: /drum-letters (a different async surface — 500-char text letters to future visitors, KV-backed) and /drum-relay (server-backed infinite rhythm chain).
