The backbeat

One more sound, in exactly two places, turns a pulse into a beat.

You now have: a kick on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 on Track 1.

Hear it

The snare lands on steps 5 and 13 — beats 2 and 4. That’s the backbeat, and once you’ve heard it you’ll hear it in almost every song you know.

Understand it

The kick sits on the beat and tells you where the floor is. The snare answers it on the off beats, and the tension between the two is what makes a beat feel like it’s moving rather than just ticking.

It’s such a strong pattern that you can strip everything else away and still be recognisably in a genre. Kick on 1 and 9 instead of all four beats, snare still on 5 and 13, hats through the middle — say it out loud as “boots and cats and boots and cats” and you’ve got it:

Notice the kick has moved. It’s no longer on every beat — it plays on 1 and 3 (steps 1 and 9) and leaves beats 2 and 4 to the snare. Two instruments taking turns.

Not every hit is equal

Click a step twice and it becomes an accent — a white ring, and noticeably louder. Click again for a ghost note, much quieter than normal.

Switch between Flat and Shaped while it loops. Same steps in almost the same places — but the second one has a loud downbeat, hard snares, and a quiet extra snare hit on step 8 that you feel more than hear. That quiet hit is a ghost note, and it’s most of what people mean when they say a beat has “feel”.

Now do it on your tbd 16

The examples above and the virtual device below are separate instruments: editing one never silently changes another. In Sound from your virtual tbd 16, you can program all practice tracks directly or use the device buttons. Both controls edit the same device state. Reset pattern restores this exercise’s starting beat.

The device still shows one track at a time. The grid keeps every exercise track visible and audible. A grid row always edits its matching device track; tracks outside this exercise remain navigable but the OLED identifies them as Disabled for this example.

  1. Press the → arrow twice to get to Track 3. Track 3 is the Snare track, running the Digital Snare machine.

  2. Press step buttons 5 and 13. Press PLAY — kick and snare together.

  3. Check your work. Press ← twice to go back to Track 1 and confirm the kick is still there. The track number is in the top-left of the display, next to the machine name.

  4. Try Track 6 too. Track 6 is Clap. Put a clap on 5 and 13 alongside the snare — layering a clap over a snare is how most house and techno records get that big backbeat.

You now have

A beat: kick, snare, and a sense of where beats 2 and 4 are. It’s still stiff, because nothing is happening between the beats. That’s next.

Next: 3 · Hats and the in-between · Previous: 1 · Your first beat

Want the hardware details? Digital Snare · Clap · Navigation