Beadwork

A Euclidean drum sequencer, built as a VST3 MIDI generator for Ableton Live and as an Audio Unit MIDI effect for Logic Pro. Version 1.3.0.

Beadwork sends MIDI to a drum rack, or to Drum Machine Designer in Logic, and follows your DAW's transport. Each of its sixteen lanes plays one note, one per pad of a standard drum rack. You set how many steps a lane has and how many hits to spread across them, and Bjorklund's algorithm places the hits as evenly as possible. Three hits in eight steps is the tresillo; five in sixteen, rotated, is the bossa nova clave.

The Beadwork panel: sixteen lanes of step necklaces with pattern and scene controls

What it does

Lanes: STEPS (1 to 32), FILLS and ROTATE set each lane's figure. Each lane also has its own clock division, direction, velocity, accent, gate and chance, plus a MIDI note, mute and solo.
Hand edits: The EDIT bar picks what a click on a step does: add or remove a hit, accent it, ratchet it (1 to 8 hits in one step), set its chance of playing, nudge it early or late, or set its velocity. Edits stay where they are when you change FILLS or ROTATE. FREEZE bakes them into the figure.
Polymeter and polyrhythm: Lanes of different lengths drift against each other. FIT squeezes a lane's steps into a set number of bars instead, so five steps can sit against four.
Patterns and chains: Sixteen patterns per lane. A lane's chain plays patterns in order with a repeat count for each, for example pattern 1 three times and then a fill. Pattern changes land on the next bar, or whatever PATTERN CHANGE is set to.
Scenes: Sixteen scenes, each storing which pattern every lane is on and which lanes are muted. Click a scene to recall it, or put scenes in the scene chain with a length in bars for each, and play it once or on a loop from the start of the song.
Scatter: Ten types (stutter, reverse, half and double time, rolls, tape stop, gate and more) at ten depths, modelled on the Scatter on Roland's TR-8S. It changes what you hear, not the pattern. Tap SCATTER to latch it, or hold it and it stops when you let go.
Feel: SWING, with a velocity offset for the swung note, HUMANISE, a global CHANCE, a velocity trim and a CLOCK divider. The random parts repeat exactly until you press REROLL.
Kit maps and grooves: A kit map holds each lane's label, MIDI note and channel; save one per drum rack. A groove holds everything else. They save and load separately, so any groove plays on any rack. Comes with General MIDI and chromatic kit maps and nine grooves, starting with an empty one.

Each lane's pattern, mute and level can be automated, along with swing, humanise and chance. Incoming MIDI passes through, so you can play the kit from a keyboard at the same time.

The engine and pattern workflow are based on the Euclid mode of a hardware step sequencer.

Video

Walkthrough video — not up yet.

Documentation

Getting started (PDF) — wiring Beadwork to a drum kit in Live.
Patterns, chains and scenes (PDF) — how the arranging layers fit together, and building a song with them.

Download

Builds for macOS, Windows and Linux are on the releases page. Every archive includes the two PDF guides. There is no standalone version.

Logic Pro loads Audio Units rather than VST3, so it has its own download: Beadwork MIDI FX, on the releases titled Beadwork for Logic.

To install it, put Beadwork MIDI FX.component in ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components and clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/"Beadwork MIDI FX.component"

Then add it to the MIDI FX slot of a Software Instrument track, in front of Drum Machine Designer or Drum Kit Designer. The zip includes a short text guide to using it in Logic.

Installation notes for the VST3 are on the front page.

Source

github.com/taddeimania/beadwork — C++ and JUCE, AGPLv3.