How to work it

• No sound?
• Your first beat
• Making it longer
• Building the song
• The arrangement
• Melody and bass
• Your voice
• Making it sound good
• Keeping your work
• DJ decks and blending
• Honest answers

First: no sound?

Your first beat

The grid is the whole idea. Each row is a sound. Each square is a moment in time. A lit square means that sound happens there.

1. Put a kick on the four big beats

   Find the KICK row. Tap the first square, then the fifth, then the ninth, then the thirteenth. Those four are the pulse of almost every dance record ever made.

   The squares with a brighter left edge are the counted beats: one, two, three, four. Aim for those.

2. Put a snare on two and four

   In the SNARE row, tap the fifth square and the thirteenth. That is the clap you nod your head to.

3. Fill in hats

   In the HI-HAT row, tap every other square. Now the beat has motion between the hits.

4. Press PLAY

   That is a beat. It is looping. Tap squares on or off while it runs and you will hear the change immediately. Nothing you do here can break anything.

5. Change the speed

   The BPM box is beats per minute. House sits near 124. Techno near 132. Hip hop near 90. Drag the number or type one in.

Making it longer

Sixteen squares is one bar. One bar on repeat is a loop. A loop is not a song yet. Here is how you stretch it.

1. Set the length

   The LENGTH menu turns one pattern into 1, 2, 4 or 8 bars. Pick 4 bars and your grid becomes 64 squares.

   Your beat is not wiped. It gets copied into every new bar, so you start with four bars of what you already had and change the parts you want to change.

2. Move between bars

   The numbers next to BAR pick which bar you are looking at. The squares stay finger sized instead of shrinking to nothing. Press ALL BARS if you want to see the whole thing at once.

   While music is playing the grid follows along on its own. If you tap a bar number it stops following for a few seconds so it does not snatch the grid away while you are working.

3. Copy a bar forward

   COPY BAR takes the bar you are looking at and drops it onto the next one. This is how real phrases get built: write bar one, copy it forward, then change two or three hits so it breathes instead of repeating flat.

Building the song

You get eight pattern slots, A through H. Think of them as eight different moments in your track.

1. Write a different idea into each slot

   Tap B and the grid clears for a new idea. Your A is safe. A common setup is: A is the quiet intro, B is the groove, C is the big drop, D is the breakdown.

2. Type the running order

   The song box takes the letters in the order you want them played. Add a number to repeat: A4 means play A four times.

   So A4 B8 C8 D4 C8 A2 is a real arrangement. Intro, groove, drop, breakdown, drop again, ending.

3. Watch the length readout

   Next to the box it tells you how many bars that is and how long it runs in minutes and seconds. Aim for 3:00 to 3:30 for something people will listen to, or 5:00 and up if it is for a dancefloor.

   With 8 bar patterns you can build past 300 bars, which is more than ten minutes. The ceiling is 512 bars. That is not a rule about music, it is about not making your phone render a forty minute file and freeze.

4. Turn on SONG MODE and press play

   Without SONG MODE ticked you just hear the one pattern you are editing, on repeat. With it ticked you hear the whole arrangement.

The arrangement

Press ARRANGE and your song turns into blocks, left to right, one row per instrument.

• Each block is one pattern. A solid block means that instrument is playing there. A faint one means it is silent.
• That is how you spot the shape of a song. You can see where the drums drop out and where the synth comes back.
• Tap a block to go and edit that part.
• Drag a block sideways to move that section earlier or later. The song box updates to match, because they are the same thing.
• The + and − buttons zoom in and out.

Melody and bass

• Press PIANO ROLL to see the notes laid out like keys. Higher up is a higher note.
• Tap empty space to place a note. Tap a note to pick it. Tap it again to remove it.
• LENGTH is how long the note holds, from one square to sixteen. This is what makes a pad sound like a pad instead of a click.
• VELOCITY is how hard it is played. Quieter notes look dimmer, so you can see the dynamics as well as hear them.
• With a note picked, those two sliders change that note. With nothing picked, they set what the next note will be.
• You can stack notes on the same square to make a chord. ADD CHORD does it for you: pick a note, press it, and it builds a chord that fits your key.
• The scale menu dims the notes that are outside your key rather than hiding them. Leave it on if you are new. It is very hard to play a wrong note with it on, and you can still play one on purpose.
• The SYNTH ARP switch makes the synth play a rolling pattern on its own instead of your notes. Good for tension before a drop.

Your voice

Press VOICE, then record. Your browser will ask for the microphone once.

• EDIT opens three sliders. START and END cut the silence off each end. LEVEL sets how loud it sits.
• HEAR TRIM plays back just the part you kept, so you are not guessing.
• PLACE drops the take onto the timeline at the part of the song you are on. Turn SONG MODE on and it comes in at that bar every time you play.
• KEEP downloads the file. Do this before you close the tab. The browser throws recordings away when you leave, and there is nothing we can do about that.

Making it sound good

Every knob has a name under it. Turn one, listen, turn it back if you hate it. There is no way to break the file.

• CUTOFF takes the brightness away. Closing it during a build and opening it on the drop is the oldest trick there is, and it still works.
• REVERB is room. A little is space. A lot is a cathedral, and it will make the beat mushy.
• SWING stops the beat sounding like a machine. A small amount goes a long way.
• DRV and CUT on each row do the same thing to just that one sound.
• MASTERING is the last polish on the whole thing. If the red limiter light stays on, you are too loud. Bring the volume down.

Keeping your work

• Type a name in the project box and press SAVE. It is stored in this browser on this device.
• Because it lives in the browser, clearing your browsing data deletes it. If a track matters to you, export it.
• EXPORT WAV bounces the whole arrangement to an audio file you can keep, send, or upload.
• STEMS exports each instrument as its own file, which is what you send to somebody who is mixing for you.
• EXPORT MIDI gives you the notes rather than the sound, to open in another program.
• SHARE URL makes a link that carries one pattern inside it. Send it and they hear your idea.

DJ decks and blending

Press DJ to open two decks. Load a track on each, then move between them.

1. Get music in

   ADD TRACKS takes files from your device. The studio reads their speed and key so it can tell you what fits with what.

2. Blend with the crossfader

   All the way left is deck A only. All the way right is deck B only. The middle is both. Slow moves sound intentional. Fast moves sound like a mistake, unless you do them exactly on the beat, in which case they sound great.

3. Blend with the filters instead

   Better than the fader most of the time. Close the filter on the track that is leaving so only its bass remains, and open the filter on the track coming in. The two never fight for the same space.

   Two kick drums at once is the most common way a mix turns to mud. Only one track should have low end at any moment.

4. Use ISOLATE for a vocal blend

   Each deck has an isolate switch. Take the vocal out of one track and the drums out of the other and you have made something neither record had on its own. That is the fun part.

5. Record the set

   REC SET captures what comes out of the mixer, including anything you play live on the pads.

Honest answers