13.3 · Making Beats

Build a beat

A step sequencer loops one bar and lets you place each drum hit by cell: sixteen cells, one sixteenth note each. Light some up and press play.

Your groove

Start from the demo backbeat or an empty grid. The playhead sweeps left to right, four cells per beat.

Hi-hat
Snare
Kick

The grid is notation

A sequencer row is just a bar of 4/4 sliced into sixteenths. Every note value you can read is a number of cells. Which means everything you program here, you could also write.

= 4 cells · one beat
= 2 cells · half a beat
= 1 cell · one cell. The grid's atom

Things to try

Three starting points, one move apart. Load one into the grid above, play it, then break it further.

kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, hat on the eighths
the second kick slides a sixteenth: instant funk
four on the floor with one rest punched in

Game · Name the groove

1 / 6

Two bars of one of the four grooves below. Which grid is playing?

Listen first. Then answer.
Score 100% on every quiz and game to complete this lesson. A perfect run sticks: a later miss never undoes it.Echo the beat →