Painting grooves

Every section has a grid. Rows are the drums and cymbals, columns are steps in time. Painting a groove is tapping the cells where the hits go.

The lanes

Columns are grouped by beat, with a small gap between beats. The first cell of each beat is shaded differently so you can count across.

Tapping and dragging

• Tap an empty cell to add a hit. Tap a hit to remove it.
• Drag along a lane to paint every cell you pass over. It works with a mouse, a finger or a pen.
• Tap a lane's name for hits on the beats, tap again for 8ths, again for 16ths, and once more to clear it. The steps follow the grid: a 32nds grid has one more, and in 6/8 the first tap lands the dotted-quarter pulses. On the hi-hat the cycle runs twice: closed hats first, then the same steps with open hats, then clear. A lane you painted by hand starts from the beats. With a keyboard, Shift+click clears straight away.
• clear at the right end of the toolbar empties the whole grid.

Accents and ghost notes

The hit / accent / ghost switch on each grid's toolbar sets what a tap paints. On a phone the same switch is in the bottom bar. All the switches move together.

• hit: a normal note.
• > accent: a harder hit, drawn with a > above the note and played louder. Tapping an accented note makes it a normal hit again.
• ( ) ghost: a very quiet note, drawn in parentheses and played softly.

With a keyboard you don't need the switch: Shift+click is always an accent and Ctrl+click is always a ghost.

Open and closed hi-hat

The hi-hat lane cycles as you tap the same cell: closed (×), open (o), open then closed (ø), then off. "Open then closed" is the hat opened on the hit and shut with the foot before the next note. Playback chokes an open hat when the next closed hat lands, the way a real one does.

Grid size and more bars

• The menu on the toolbar sets the resolution: 8ths, 16ths, 32nds, 64ths, triplets or sextuplets, depending on the time signature. New sections start in 8ths. Switching keeps your hits where they fall in time. See Time signatures and resolution.
• + adds a bar to the pattern, copying the last bar so you only change what's different. − removes the last bar. A two-bar or four-bar pattern is how you write a groove with a fill at the end.

See it as notation

Turn on Notation in the header, or under More on a phone, to show each grid as drum notation under it, updating as you paint. It's the same drawing the worksheet prints. The drum notation key explains what each mark means.