Beat Designer

Beat Designer is a MIDI pattern sequencer that allows you to create your own drum parts or patterns for a project. With Beat Designer, you can quickly and easily set up the drums for a project, by experimenting and creating new drum sequences from scratch.

Normally, you work on a short sequence, adjusting and modifying it while playing it back in a loop. The drum patterns can then either be converted to MIDI parts on a track or triggered using MIDI notes during playback.

Control Panel

  1. Step display

  2. Jump mode

  3. Swing and Offset controls

  4. Flam position settings

  5. Pattern display

  6. Swing settings

Patterns and Subbanks

Beat Designer patterns are saved as pattern banks. One pattern bank contains 4 subbanks which in turn contain 12 patterns each.

In the pattern display in the lower part of Beat Designer, subbanks and patterns are displayed graphically. To select a subbank, click a number (1 to 4) at the top of the display. To select a pattern within this subbank, click a key in the keyboard display below.

Initial Settings

The steps represent the beat positions in the pattern. You can specify the number of steps and the step resolution globally for a pattern.

  • Click in the Number of steps for this pattern value field and enter a value. The maximum number of steps is 64.

  • The playback length, that is, the note value for the steps, can be specified on the Step Resolution pop-up menu. On this menu, you can also set triplet values. These also affect the Swing setting.