Variation

How to build a 16-step loop that never quite repeats itself.

You now have: a groove with swing and shaped velocities.

This lesson is being written. The outline below is what it will cover.

Planned outline

Each step can carry details that make it different from its neighbours:

Field	What it does	Musical use
Cha	Chance, 0–100% — how often this step actually fires	A hat that plays 70% of the time stops being a loop
Rep.	Repeat / ratchet count	Two or three fast hits on one step: rolls, fills, drill hats
Len.	Gate length in 1/64-step units	Short and clipped versus long and ringing
Vel.	Velocity	Accents and ghost notes, from lesson 5
Not	Note	Pitch — matters most on tonal tracks, from lesson 8
RNot2 / RNot3	Two extra notes, relative to the first	Chords from a single step

Also planned:

• Micro-timing — nudging a step slightly early or late without changing the swing of everything else. This is how you make a hat sit “on top of” or “behind” the beat.
• Pattern length is per track. Set the hats to 15 steps while the kick stays at 16 and the two drift against each other, resetting every 15 bars. The cheapest polyrhythm on the device.
• Play order — Forward, Reverse, Ping-pong, Random jump, Random walk. Random walk on a hat track is an easy win.
• Where the balance sits: enough variation to stay alive, not so much that the beat stops being a beat.

The finished exercise will expose Chance, Repeat, and track length directly in the virtual instrument, with an audible starting pattern and Reset.

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Next: 7 · Parameter locks · Previous: 5 · Swing and accents

Reference: Step editing · Pattern