Tutorial · Beginner · 10 min
A drum loop
Program a beat in the step grid, try Euclidean rhythms, and give the drums some groove.
A drum track
Switch to Studio. Press + Track and choose Drum kit. A kit is just a patch: one Keyboard feeding six drum modules, each listening to its own note (kick C2, snare D2, clap D♯2, closed hat F♯2, open hat A♯2, tom A2: the General MIDI drum notes). The note a drum listens to shows in its title and is set with its Plays on knob. Press ✎ on the track to see it in Modular mode.
A one-bar region
Double-click (or double-tap) the track's lane at bar 1 to make a region. The bottom panel opens the Step grid: one row per drum, one column per sixteenth note.
Four on the floor
Click the kick on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13, the clap on 5 and 13, and the closed hat on every other step. Press play (Space). Drag the right edge of the region to 8 bars: the one-bar pattern repeats, shown by thin lines in the region.
Accents and ghost notes
Right-click a hit (long-press on a phone) to cycle soft, normal and loud. Softer hats in between the louder ones make the groove breathe.
Euclidean rhythms
Open the Euclidean tab. Each ring spreads a number of hits as evenly as possible over a number of steps. Switch on the tom row with 3 hits in 8 steps (the tresillo), or the open hat with 5 in 16. Rotate shifts where the pattern starts. Rings with different step counts drift against each other.
Take a ready-made beat apart
Every demo song has a drum track. Open one and look at it in the step grid and the piano roll.
Open "Simple techno loop" ↗