Little Drum Machine Manual
Overview
Little Drum Machine is what the name suggests: a drum machine that is easy to use and has all the necessary bits without overcomplicating things. It runs as a VST3 or Audio Unit plugin on macOS, as a VST3 plugin on Windows, and as an AUv3 instrument on iPad in any AUv3 host.
Make sound your way: start right away with the built-in sounds, load your own samples as you go, or send MIDI and let your favorite drum modules or synths do the talking.
The feature set at a glance:
- Drum grid sequencer with 8 lanes and per-step velocity for accents and ghost notes.
- 32 samples across 8 drum categories included to get you started.
- Four sample variants per drum: switch them per lane, or even per step.
- Load your own samples and build your own kits.
- Musical Randomize for instant grooves; Mutate to generate variations of your patterns.
- 16 scenes per preset, chained in the Arranger into full arrangements.
- Built-in mixer with per-lane EQ, panning, mute and solo.
- Master EQ and one-knob glue compressor.
- Flexible MIDI routing to trigger external sound generators.
- Swing to get groovy.
- Twenty genre presets included: Techno, House, Hip Hop, Drum & Bass, Jazz, and more.
- Save and manage your own presets.
- Light and dark themes.
The chapters that follow walk every control on each tab, in the order it appears on screen. The menu bar is documented first because its controls are visible from every tab.
The Grid Tab
This is where a pattern lives. Top to bottom: an action bar, the 16-step sequencer grid with its lane gutter, and the scene strip.
Action bar
Left to right:
- Random: generates a fresh pattern for the current scene. Each lane gets a musically informed part: kicks land on the floor, snares on the backbeat, hats fill the pulse, so the result is a groove, not noise.
- Mutate: nudges the current pattern instead of rerolling it: adds and removes a few hits at random. Use it to evolve a pattern you already like.
- Lane dropdown: restricts Random and Mutate to a single lane, or All to touch every lane. Handy for rerolling just the hats while keeping a kick pattern you like.
- Rate: the note value of each step (1/32, 1/16, 1/8). At 1/16 the sixteen steps span one bar; 1/32 runs double-time, 1/8 half-time.
- Swing (slider): lengthens on-beat steps and shortens off-beats for a shuffled feel. 0 is straight time; the loop length stays the same.
- Follow (toggle): when on, the grid follows playback: each time the Arranger switches scenes, the grid shows the playing one. You can still click a scene to edit it; the grid holds your choice until the next scene change. Grayed out while the Arranger is off, since there's nothing to follow.
- ◀ / ▶: shift every lane one step left or right, with wrap-around.
- Clear: clears every step in the current scene.
- Copy: copies the current scene's pattern (steps and step volumes) to an internal clipboard.
- Paste: pastes the clipboard into the current scene. Copy from one scene, switch, paste: the quickest way to build variations.
The step grid
Sixteen columns by eight lanes, with a step-number row on top; a playhead marker sweeps left to right and loops. The lanes read bottom to top, the way drum machines traditionally do: Kick, Snare, Clap, CHat (closed hat), OHat (open hat), Tom, Perc, Cymbal.
- Click a cell to toggle the step on or off. New steps start at full volume.
- Drag vertically on a cell to set that step's volume; the fill height shows the level. Step volume shapes both the sound and the MIDI velocity the lane emits, so ghost notes and accents carry through to anything Little Drum Machine is driving.
The lane gutter
To the left of the grid, each lane has a row of small controls:
- Lane name: which drum this row plays.
- Slot button: picks which of the lane's four samples plays (see the Samples tab). Clicking cycles 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → ★ and back to 1. The star is per-step mode: each step chooses its own sample slot. In star mode a lit step shows its slot number, and clicking a step cycles it through off → 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → off, so a single lane can, say, alternate two different toms.
- M / S: mute and solo. The same switches as on the Mixer tab; the two tabs mirror each other live.
Scene strip
The row of 16 numbered slots at the bottom. Each scene stores its own pattern (steps, step volumes, and per-step slot choices) for all eight lanes. Everything else (samples, mixer, EQ, Rate, Swing) is shared across scenes, so flipping scenes changes the rhythm, not the sound.
Click a slot to switch which scene you're editing; with the Arranger off, that scene also plays. The filled slot is the scene you're editing; a border marker shows the scene that's playing, which can differ while the Arranger runs the show. Scenes are the building blocks you chain together on the Arranger tab.
The Arranger Tab
Where you build a longer piece out of your scenes by chaining them into a sequence. The tab has a menu box with the master toggle, the Arrangement panel with the chain itself, a scene keypad, and an action row.
Arranger toggle
In the menu box at the top:
- On: the chain drives playback: each slot plays its scene for its bar count, then the next slot takes over, looping back to the start after the last one.
- Off: the scene selected on the Grid tab simply loops. Useful while you're focused on a single pattern and the arrangement would get in the way.
The chain
The Arrangement panel shows the chain as a row of cells reading left to right, up to 32 slots across two rows. Each cell names a scene; a small tag in its top-right corner shows the bar count when it's more than one bar.
- The playing cell is filled with the accent color and moves with playback.
- The selected cell has a thick outline: that's the cell your edits target. Click any cell to select it.
- After the last cell sits the append cell, marked with a loop arrow: this is where the chain wraps back to the start, and it's also the typing cursor, where new slots are added. It's the default selection, so a fresh tab is ready to extend the song.
Scene keypad
The row of 16 numbered buttons under the chain. Editing works like typing on a classic drum machine:
- With the append cell selected, tapping any scene adds it to the end of the chain as a new 1-bar slot. The cursor stays on the append cell, so you can type out a whole song scene by scene.
- With a real slot selected, tapping a different scene rewrites that slot in place, keeping its length. Tapping the slot's own scene inserts another 1-bar slot of it right after and moves the selection there, so repeated taps march forward through the chain, extending the section bar by bar.
Action row
Below the keypad:
- Insert: inserts a copy of the selected slot right after it, then retype its scene on the keypad. From the append cell it appends a copy of the last slot. Grayed out when the chain is full.
- Delete: removes the selected slot, like backspace. From the append cell it removes the last slot. The last remaining slot can't be deleted: a chain always has at least one.
- Length (stepper): the selected slot's length in bars (1-8). The direct route to "scene 5 for 8 bars" without eight keypad taps.
The Samples Tab
Each lane plays one of four samples, and this tab is where you manage them: a table of eight lane rows by four slot columns. Every slot ships with a built-in sample (four characters per drum), and the Grid tab's slot button (or its per-step star mode) picks which one plays.
Each cell holds:
- Sample name: tap anywhere on the cell to audition its sample.
- × button: resets the slot to its built-in sample.
- Eject button: loads your own .wav file into the slot, replacing the built-in sample for that slot.
Presets and saved sessions reference your loaded samples by file location rather than copying the audio (on iPad, the file is copied into the app's own storage when you load it, so it stays available). If a file can't be found when a preset loads, the slot shows its name in red, stays silent, and the info bar raises a warning naming the missing file; load the file again or reset the slot to clear it.
The Mixer Tab
Nine channel strips: one per lane, plus Master on the right. Each lane strip, top to bottom:
- Lane name.
- High / Mid / Low (dials): a 3-band EQ for the lane: high shelf at 8 kHz, mid bell at 1 kHz, low shelf at 100 Hz, each ±12 dB.
- Vol (fader): the lane's level into the master bus. The fader track doubles as the lane's level meter, lighting green through amber to red with the signal.
- Pan (dial): the lane's stereo position.
- M / S: mute and solo. Solo silences every non-solo lane; mute silences this one. Mute and solo also stop the lane's MIDI output, so what you hear is what downstream gear gets. The same switches appear on the Grid tab's gutter and the Settings tab; all views stay in sync.
The Master strip drops Pan and M/S (meaningless on the sum) and adds:
- Comp (dial): a one-knob "glue" compressor on the master bus. At 0 it's bypassed; turning it up compresses harder and automatically makes up the level, pulling the kit together.
- Vol (fader): the output level, after the master EQ and compressor. Its meter shows the final output.
The Settings Tab
Two boxes: instance settings on top, MIDI routing below.
Instance settings
These are per-instance preferences, not part of presets; they stay put while you cycle through patches.
- Theme: switches the editor's color scheme; the button shows the active theme (Light / Dark) and clicking flips it. Applies to every Snorkel Audio plugin window on the machine. Pure presentation.
- MIDI Out (toggle): emit a MIDI note for every audible drum hit, on the per-lane channel and note set below. Use it to have Little Drum Machine's grooves drive external drum modules or synths.
- Audio Out (toggle): render the internal drum sounds. Switched off, Little Drum Machine becomes a pure MIDI sequencer: the lanes still emit MIDI, and auditioning on the Samples tab still sounds, but the pattern itself is silent.
MIDI Routing
One row per lane:
- Lane name.
- M / S: the same mute and solo switches as the Grid and Mixer tabs. Muted or soloed-out lanes emit no MIDI.
- Ch: the MIDI channel this lane emits on, Off or 1-16. Off silences just this lane's MIDI. The default is channel 10, the General MIDI drum channel.
- Note (stepper): the MIDI note this lane emits, 0-127, with the note name shown beside it. Defaults follow the General MIDI drum map (Kick 36, Snare 38, and so on), so Little Drum Machine lines up with GM-compatible drum modules out of the box.