Your first beat

Sixteen steps and one sound. That’s where every groove starts.

The players on this page are browser demos with simple synthesised drums — they teach the pattern, not the tbd 16’s sound engines.

Hear it

Press play.

One sound, four hits, repeating forever. That is a complete, usable drum pattern — and it’s the foundation of house, techno, disco and most other dance music ever made.

Understand it

The row you just heard is 16 steps, and 16 steps is one bar of music. Each step is a sixteenth note: the shortest thing you’ll normally place.

Look at where the hits are — steps 1, 5, 9 and 13. Those are the four beats you count when you tap your foot: one, two, three, four. That’s why those four columns are drawn a little brighter than the rest. Everything else sits between the beats.

The demo splits the row into two groups of eight on purpose. So does the device: the tbd 16 has 16 step buttons arranged as two rows of eight, so what you see here is what you’ll see under your fingers.

Try it here

Now the grid is live. Click a step to switch it on or off.

Three things worth actually doing:

  • Pull the tempo down to 90. Same pattern, completely different mood.
  • Switch step 13 off. Hear the hole where the fourth beat should be? Your ear was expecting it.
  • Switch every step on. It stops being a beat and becomes a machine gun. Space is what makes a pattern feel like music.

Clicking a step more than once cycles it through on → accent → ghost → off. Ignore that for now — accents come in lesson 2 and ghost notes in lesson 5.

Now do it on your tbd 16

Here’s the device with that pattern on it. This is a separate practice instrument, not a remote control for the examples above. Program its kick from the Sound from your virtual tbd 16 grid or with the device buttons; both edit the same runtime state. Reset pattern restores the lesson’s starting beat.

  1. Power on. The device boots into the Sound screen with Stp shown at the top — step mode, where the 16 buttons draw a pattern.

  2. You’re already on Track 1. Track 1 is the Kick track and boots with Synth Kick20. This first exercise deliberately enables only that track. Press → and the OLED says Disabled for this example; press ← to return to Track 1.

  3. Press step buttons 1, 5, 9 and 13. Their LEDs light up. Remember the layout: the top row is steps 1–8, the bottom row is steps 9–16, so you’re pressing the first and fifth button of each row.

  4. Press PLAY. That’s your pattern, looping.

  5. Set the tempo. Press FUNC2 to open OUTPUT, then press LEFT to move to TEMPO, and turn Knob 1. This is the same two-stage route as the production firmware.

Need the whole browser instrument louder or quieter? Stay on OUTPUT and turn Knob 4 (Master) before moving left to Tempo. It changes the production Master value and the sound from the virtual device together.

Preview scope: Master is the Global Sound control connected to browser audio in this first preview. Input has no virtual input source yet, and the Delay and Reverb returns update the real OLED state but are not audible yet.

You now have

A pulse. It’s not a beat yet — for that you need something answering the kick, which is exactly what the next lesson is about.

Next: 2 · The backbeat

Want the hardware details? Quick Start · Navigation · Synth Kick