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The BeatPad Drum View |
![]() The Drum View |
Tap on either icon in the lower left corner of the screen to switch over to the drum part of the pattern. The drum part can only be heard while using MIDI; the Palm OS is not capable of playing multiple instruments on the built-in speaker. In this screen the columns for each step of the pattern are a little bit narrower but now you can see the names of the eleven different drum instruments down the left side of the screen, and the top row is labeled "accent". To make a particular drum play at a particular step in the pattern, simply tap in the appropriate square. You can also "paint" drum notes on or off by dragging the pen around the screen; this makes it easy to turn on every step of one drum, or to play multipul instruments on a single beat. To give you even more control of which drums are being played, there are columns of mute and solo controls running down between the drum labels and the pattern grid (they are labelled with a small "m" and "s" at the top of the screen). Tapping on a mute will silence that instrument for the entire length of the pattern. Turning on a solo will mute all OTHER instruments in the pattern. Multiple solos and mutes can be used together. |
![]() Moving the Loop Pointer |
The top row (labelled "accent") lets you set BeatPad to play certain beats of the pattern harder/louder than others. Tapping a box in this row will make the velocity higher for every drum instrument in that step. Accents will not effect the melodic part, only the drums. In the screens shown to the left, the pattern has also been changed. Previously we were working with pattern "A1", but by tapping on " C" and "4", we are now looking at that pattern. If you do this while BeatPad is playing, it will wait until it is finished playing through the original pattern before switching over to the new one. The end of a pattern is marked by the Loop Pointer, a little left-pointing arrow just above the accent row on this drum screen, or just above the overview in the melodic screen. Tapping anywhere in that row will move the Loop Pointer. When BeatPad reaches that step of the pattern it will start over, skipping any notes to the right of that step. The Loop Pointer has been moved in the second screen shown here.
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