The rhythm machine
Open the Drums tool with its tab (02), or by choosing the Drum machine on the shelf. It has six voices, each on its own card: Kick, Snare, Clap, Closed hat, Open hat and Tom. A card shows where its sound comes from and how many hits it has in this pattern.
Below the cards is a row of numbered buttons. With the Resolution at 1/16 (the default) there are sixteen, one for every sixteenth note of the bar. Buttons 1, 5, 9 and 13 are the four beats you would count along to.
Placing hits
- Choose a voice by clicking its card.
- Tap a numbered button to put a hit there. Tap it again to take the hit away.
- If your pattern is longer than one bar, use Bar to choose which bar the buttons show.
- Choose a finer Resolution (1/32 or 1/64) for faster rolls; the buttons then page sixteen at a time.
- Press Play to hear it loop, and keep adjusting while it plays.
TipA new hit uses that voice’s normal strength. Kicks land harder than hats, which is usually what you want.
A beat that works
Almost every pop, rock and hip hop beat is built on the same frame. Start there, then break it on purpose.
- Kick on 1 and 9
- Beats one and three: the weight of the bar.
- Snare on 5 and 13
- Beats two and four: the backbeat you clap along to.
- Closed hat on every odd button
- Eighth notes that keep time between the kick and snare.
- One extra kick
- On 11, halfway between beats three and four, to give the loop a push.
- An open hat
- On an off-beat such as 15, to let the bar breathe before it repeats.
- Clap with the snare
- Layer a Clap on 5 and 13 for a bigger backbeat.
- Toms at the end
- A few Tom hits in the last beat make a fill that leads into the next bar.
Hit strength
Not every hit should be equally loud. Turn Edit strength on: now tapping a lit button selects it instead of removing it, and a Hit strength slider (1 to 100%) sets how hard that hit plays. Quieter hats between louder ones are the quickest way to make a beat feel played rather than typed.
The drum grid
The Buttons view shows one voice at a time. Switch to Drum grid to see all six as rows, one column per step.
- Click a cell to add or remove a hit; drag to paint several.
- Right-click deletes; right-drag up or down sets a hit’s strength.
- Shift+click cycles a hit through softer and harder.
Ready-made rhythms
The Fill menu (Add a rhythm…) writes a whole beat for you: ROCK, 4-FLOOR, TRAP or FUNK. It replaces every drum hit in the pattern, repeated in every bar, so use it as a starting point and then change it. Undo brings your own beat back.
Shaping each voice
Each voice has its own panel. Sound source chooses where the sound comes from, and the controls change with it. ▶ Preview plays the voice once so you can hear a change without starting the loop.
- Chip noise
- The classic 8-bit noise drum. Its knobs are decay (how long it rings), Noise filter (its texture) and tone (its brightness). All chip-noise voices share one channel for pan and level.
- Synth
- A synthesized drum with its own Tune (on the kick, snare and tom), Pan, Level and decay, plus Shape the sound for deeper controls such as drive and punch. Choosing Synth turns on the expanded studio.
- Sample
- Plays a sound file you load. Chapter 6 covers samples.