How to use

The screen

The screen has three parts, from top to bottom.

• The control panel — tempo, Ramp, Timer, Patterns / Sequences and Start. It stays at the top of the screen while you scroll. The ⊟ at its top right switches to a one-row compact view (the slider and the tempo buttons are hidden); ⊞ brings the full view back.
• The dial — beats per bar (Beat) above it, a box for each track in the four corners, and the view switches, ALL OFF and the master volume below it.
• Track settings — open from the coloured strip in a corner box. On a computer they open under the dial; on a phone they open over the page, just below the control panel.

The dial starts as eighth notes in 4/4: track 1 (red) plays the beat and track 2 (blue) plays the offbeat. Press Start and you will hear it straight away.

Setting the tempo

• The range is 30 to 240 BPM. Use the slider or the −4% / −5 / −1 / +1 / +5 / +4% buttons. The % buttons move the tempo by 4% of its current value (always by at least one).
• Press TAP in time with the music; from the second tap the tempo follows your taps. A two-second pause starts a new count.
• The tempo buttons (30 to 240) jump straight to that tempo. Pressing the selected one again steps through +5, +10 and back. When the tempo falls between two buttons, both get a faint outline.
• Changing the tempo during playback keeps your place in the bar. Changing the tempo by hand turns Ramp off.

Tempo ramp and timer

Ramp raises or lowers the tempo one step at a time, always at the start of a bar. Press the shape icon and the “min–max” range next to the switch to open its settings.

• Shape: Min→Max→Min, Min→Max or Max→Min.
• Min and Max: the range to move through. Min must be lower than Max.
• Step: the size of each step, either in BPM (1 to 30) or as a percentage of the current tempo (1 to 20), so the steps get wider as the tempo rises.
• Keep: how many bars each step lasts (1 to 64).
• The dialog shows how long it takes to reach the final tempo. Apply to Timer sets the timer to end after one Keep at the final tempo and turns the timer on.
• After the last step the tempo holds and the metronome keeps playing. Pause keeps your progress; after Stop the next Start begins from the first step. Turning Ramp on during playback starts it at the next bar.
• The settings are remembered in this browser, but the switch is not — Ramp is always off when you open the page.

Timer counts down. While stopped, press the time (starting at 01:00) to set minutes and seconds (up to 99:59). Changes apply as you type — close with ✕ or by pressing outside. Stepping the seconds past either end rolls over into the minutes. Turn off “Stop at 00:00” in the same place to keep playing when it reaches zero. The →| mark next to the time is red when the timer will stop the metronome. After a pause, the timer starts again from the full time.

Reading and editing the dial

• Beat (1 to 4) sets the beats per bar. The dial is divided into that many slices and the needle goes round once per bar; the orange mark at 12 o'clock is beat 1. Changing it stops playback, and any new beats copy the pattern of beat 1.
• From the outside in, the rings are track 1 (red), 2 (blue), 3 (green) and 4 (yellow). Press a ring to select that track; its edges light up.
• Press a node (a point on a ring) to switch it on or off. Only the selected track can be edited. Pressing a node on another track selects that track first, so a slip onto the next ring never changes what you hear.
• A node's shape shows where it sits in the beat. Circle: the beat itself. Triangle: the offbeat with division 1/2 (the third point with 1/3). Square: the second point with 1/3, and the points inside the beat with 1/5 and 1/7. Thin pointed marks (large and small): subdivision points. Each shape has its own volume, so you can make the beat strong and the offbeat soft.
• In each corner box, M mutes the track and S solos it (only that track plays; press again to clear).
• With L (Link) on, pressing a node switches the same shape on every beat at once. Turning it on copies beat 1 onto every beat, replacing what the other beats had. Turn it off to give each beat its own pattern.
• The three buttons under the dial show or hide the needle and the beat numbers (dice dots), and flip the dial so that beat 1 sits at 6 o'clock. These three are remembered in this browser.
• ALL OFF at the bottom left switches off every node on every track (after a confirmation). The speaker at the bottom right is the master volume and mute.

Track settings

Open them from the coloured strip in a corner box. Use the coloured dots at the top to move to another track, or swipe sideways on a phone.

• Sound (8 choices): Clave (Hi), Clave (Lo), Hi-Hat (Cl), Hi-Hat (Op), Snare, Bass Drum, Sustain (A) and Rest.
  • Sustain (A) is a held tone (the note A) that lasts until the next node that is on — for working on rhythms where note length matters. Only one track can use it.
  • Rest makes no sound; its nodes stop the Sustain (A) tone where they are on.
• Volume: the track volume, plus M and S.
• Division and subdivision: division splits each beat into equal parts (1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/5 or 1/7), and subdivision splits those parts again (1/2, 1/3 or 1/4). Subdivisions are not available with 1/5 and 1/7. Changing either one switches on every node of the track. Changes made during playback take effect from the next bar.
• Swing delays every second node. It works with division 1/2 (subdivision 1 or 1/2). The box next to it sets how far (50 to 80%, starting at 66%); 50% means no swing.
• Link is the same as the L in the corner box. All Off switches off every node on this track (after a confirmation).
• Volume by shape: each shape on the dial has its own volume slider, and pressing its icon mutes that shape. Which shapes appear depends on the division and subdivision.

Start, pause and stop

• Start plays, Pause pauses and Resume carries on from the same place. While playing, a ■ (Stop) button appears next to it.
• Stop goes back to the beginning of the bar. A loaded sequence stays loaded after Stop, and the dial keeps the step you stopped on: the next Start resumes from that step. To go back to the first step, press ⏮ — it appears where Stop was, so pressing Stop twice does it. When the timer stops the metronome at 00:00, the sequence returns to the first step by itself.
• Locking the screen or switching to another app pauses playback.

Saving and loading patterns

Press Patterns / Sequences, left of Start, to open the list. On a wide screen it opens to the right of the dial; on a narrow one it takes the dial's place.

• Save: type a name and press Save. The tempo, the beats per bar, every setting of every track and the solo are saved. Each save adds a new pattern, up to 20. You can rename and delete them here too.
• Load: press a name. It applies at once when stopped, or at the start of the next bar during playback. The loaded pattern's name lights up in yellow.
• Two switches above the list decide what comes with it. Both start off, so loading a pattern changes only the rhythm — your tempo, mute and solo stay as they are. This is handy for comparing patterns while the track you play yourself stays muted. Turn on “Load tempo with the pattern” to take the pattern's tempo too, and “Load mute / solo with the pattern” to take its mute and solo.

Playing patterns in order with sequences

• A sequence plays saved patterns one after another, each for the number of bars you choose (1 to 64), and loops back to the start after the last one. A sequence can have up to 16 steps, and you can keep up to 20 sequences.
• Create one with New on the Sequences tab. Slot 0 plays only the first time through and is skipped after that — useful for a count-in, and optional.
• Play loads the sequence onto the dial; press Start to begin. While it is loaded, the control panel shows the current step and bar, and whatever the sequence drives (Start, the tempo, M/S) glows green.
• To unload it, press Stop in the list or the ✕ in its row on the control panel.
• The same two switches used for loading patterns also apply when a sequence moves to its next step.

Example: building a polyrhythm

A polyrhythm plays even pulses of different lengths at the same time — for example three against two. On the dial each pulse is a ring of evenly spaced nodes, so you can see where the rings meet and drift apart while you hear it. Choosing a division switches on every node of that track, so each pattern plays as soon as you set it.

• 3 against 2 — Track 1: division 1/2. Track 2: division 1/3.
• 4 against 3 — Track 1: division 1/3. Track 2: division 1/2 with subdivision 1/2.
• 5 against 4 — Track 1: division 1/5. Track 2: division 1/2 with subdivision 1/2.
• 7 against 4 — Track 1: division 1/7. Track 2: division 1/2 with subdivision 1/2.

A track keeps its subdivision when you change its division, so if a pattern sounds busier than expected, set the subdivision back to 1. Give the two tracks clearly different sounds, such as Clave (Hi) and Clave (Lo), and start slowly.

What is remembered

Kept in this browser

Saved patterns and sequences, the Ramp settings, the dial view (needle, beat numbers, flip) and the compact view.

Reset each time you open the page

The dial itself (tempo and tracks), the Ramp switch, the Timer and the master volume. Save anything you want to come back to as a pattern.

Everything is saved in this browser only. There is no account, nothing is uploaded, and nothing follows you to another device. Clearing this site's data removes it.