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SpecDrum was an inexpensive drum machine
Drum machine

A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums and/or other percussion instruments. Drum machines are very useful instruments for a wide variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music....
, which, unlike most standalone drum machines, was a peripheral
Peripheral

A peripheral is a device attached to a host computer behind the chipset whose primary functionality is dependent upon the host, and can therefore be considered as expanding the hosts capabilities, while not forming part of the system's core computer architecture....
 for the popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer
Home computer

A home computer was a class of personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as accessible personal computers, more capable than video game consoles....
. It was released by Cheetah Marketing
Cheetah Marketing

Cheetah Marketing was a United Kingdom-based company that produced electronic music-related hardware products and software for home computer systems during the 1980s....
 in 1986. It was notable for its low retail price of £29.95, when standalone alternatives typically cost around £250-£300 for a similar functionality.

The device connected to the expansion bus on the ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd. Referred to during development as the ZX81 Colour and ZX82, the machine was launched as the ZX Spectrum by Sinclair to highlight the machine's colour display, compared with the black-and-white of its predec...
. The ZX Spectrum ran software that was used to program rhythm patterns, and chain these into songs.






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SpecDrum was an inexpensive drum machine
Drum machine

A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums and/or other percussion instruments. Drum machines are very useful instruments for a wide variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music....
, which, unlike most standalone drum machines, was a peripheral
Peripheral

A peripheral is a device attached to a host computer behind the chipset whose primary functionality is dependent upon the host, and can therefore be considered as expanding the hosts capabilities, while not forming part of the system's core computer architecture....
 for the popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer
Home computer

A home computer was a class of personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as accessible personal computers, more capable than video game consoles....
. It was released by Cheetah Marketing
Cheetah Marketing

Cheetah Marketing was a United Kingdom-based company that produced electronic music-related hardware products and software for home computer systems during the 1980s....
 in 1986. It was notable for its low retail price of £29.95, when standalone alternatives typically cost around £250-£300 for a similar functionality.

The device connected to the expansion bus on the ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd. Referred to during development as the ZX81 Colour and ZX82, the machine was launched as the ZX Spectrum by Sinclair to highlight the machine's colour display, compared with the black-and-white of its predec...
. The ZX Spectrum ran software that was used to program rhythm patterns, and chain these into songs. Patterns and songs could then be loaded and saved onto cassette tape.

The SpecDrum was an 8-voice machine (i.e. it allowed the user to load 8 different percussion samples). However it only had 3 output channels (i.e. maximum polyphony of 3 samples at a time) - the first channel could trigger the 'bass drum' voice, the second channel was used for the three snare/tom voices, and the third channel for the remaining four samples.

The standard kit consisted of bass drum, snare drum, mid and low tomtoms, cowbell, hi-hat open and closed and hand claps. The sound has been compared to that of a LinnDrum
LinnDrum

The LinnDrum is a drum machine manufactured by Roger Linn. It was released in 1982 as a successor to the Linn LM-1. The LinnDrum has 15 drum sounds Sampling d from real drums, a Music sequencer for programming rhythm patterns and five Trigger pad inputs....
. Cheetah also sold 'electro', 'afro' and 'Latin' kits on cassette, which could be loaded into the ZX Spectrum in place of the standard one. In addition, software was available enabling the user to sample and build their own custom kits.

The SpecDrum could also, in principle, be synchronized to other musical equipment, using a sync pulse sent and received from the ZX Spectrum's "ear" and "mic" audio input/output sockets.