Drambo by Beepstreet - iOS - walkthrough

[@timelapsedigital2536]

Everything I’ve learnt about Drambo I’ve learnt from your videos. Thank-you so much!

[@mrCharlesG]

Wow - this is the most incredible app ! just when i was giving up on the iPad for music

[@Nomo_Popo]

Thank you so much for doing these. Not just for doing them , but doing them right; in a straightforward, linear and logical manner. Most of the time you cover practical use cases where I may ask my self 'what about....' and then you go there. Much appreciated. Great job, thanks again.

[@Philodrone]

Thanks! I bought the app few days ago, but I couldn't wrap my head around it. Glad to see it's somewhat Elektron inspired cause I have one of their units. Very informative video!

[@motoboy6666]

Stunned by this, feels all out genious. Wow.

[@EnriquePage91]

motoboy6666 its a beast. I just wish it had MIDI FX Support! Probably the one thing missing.

[@EmergingPatterns]

Thanks for the introduction. The whole thing is really intuitive but your video pointed things I was missing :)

[@3sleeves]

Great tutorials!

[@Jimantronic]

Wow, thanks Ben, this is very cool! I can see hints of Bitwig, Op-z and Octatrack influence in there, but it’s coherently its own thing too. Very impressed, this is going to be great :)

[@mundelator]

Great introduction to that brilliant versatile app.

[@RCAVDH]

Great video, thank you for sharing,

[@mankismelbournejay]

Super helpful, cheers!

[@jeffbirr7162]

Thanks a bunch!!

[@databang]

I appreciate the helping walkthrough. Sub’d from Berzerkeley.

[@just_pierre9730]

Great! Thank you, Ben

[@WhySoBroke]

Excellent!!

[@Rhyminggaijin]

Thanks !!

[@srcodling]

Thanks for this! Great intro to get me going... is there a way to randomize notes in the sequencer? You can randomize the possibility of a note playing, but how about randomize the pitch of a note within a scale?

[@benrichards4554]

You could use a couple approaches! Use a SH lfo or random module use it as CV quantizer (in misc/utility) pitch input. You can set a note scale, and then set the low-high range (scale) of notes that play. Thanks!

[@wallbrown1876]

Steve Codling or you could simply p lock the pitch of your oscillators.

[@callum6224]

Wall Brown That’s just called using the sequencer, so uh, yeah that wouldn’t be random..

[@Unifono2012]

Great overview

[@SabcatPrinting]

Great vid thanks Ben.

[@deepseadiver8191]

Fantastic tutorial!!! One question: when setting timing offset for a given step, can it have a negative value?

[@benrichards4554]

Thanks! Not currently possible, but you should make a feature request at the Beepstreet forum.

[@deepseadiver8191]

@@benrichards4554 Thank you. Turns out this may not be that easy as I see that currently when recording steps without quantization, if the step is even just slightly early, it is recorded as a step before with hight positive offset .This tells me that perhaps this was the developer's choice to think about those notes' offset only as a positive value. Since you're here, I have one more question: when setting the gyroscope as a modulator source and assigning into a knob, is it possible to record its modulation as p-lock / automation into steps? I tried pressing record while modulating a knob with a gyroscope but the values did not get recorded into steps. Thanks! Once again, these are amazing tutorials! I've used the app for less than 4 hours and love it.

[@benrichards4554]

Interesting idea! So the reason this doesn’t work immediately is because Drambo doesn’t record modulation to a source from the modulator, like from an LFO, envelope, or in this case the gyroscope. However, you can route midi out from one auv3 instance into another, and Drambo will record midi cc movements of mapped properly. So open one Drambo instance in AUM, plop down a gyroscope module, a midi cc generator (connected to gyroscope), and a midi output module (you can also collect multiple midi signals before the midi output module with a midi mixer). Tap the dotted line in the midi output and just select midi out, and pick a cc for the cc generator to send. Open another instance of Drambo and open your project. In AUM, route the midi from the first Drambo into this one. Then tap the midi control button at the top (a circle with two dots), and tap the parameter you want to control and record. Since the gyroscope is always picking up movements, the parameter may immediately map. You can also double tap the knob you want to edit and manually set the cc. Now you can record! You might set p-lock recording to ‘always’ (this is under recording settings with quantization). After you have recorded something, you may want to unmap the midi control, either in the app with the idi control editor, or by breaking the connection in AUM, or disabling the gyroscope module.

[@deepseadiver8191]

Ben Richards Wow! Thank you for this incredibly detailed answer! Now I have no excuse and have to try it! Thanks!!!!

[@Steelichi9]

Hi, Ben. I’m new to Drambo and was wondering if there is an option for different time signatures in the sequencer? If not, do you think it would be difficult for the developer to implement that option in a future update? I really love 6/8 and 5/4 grooves, so it would be nice to be able to set the sequencer to a different signature. Thanks for your vids, they really help.🤙🏼

[@benrichards4554]

No 5/4 or 6/8 yet - you can set pattern steps per beat but it’s either 3 or 4. You can use the Jump step component to get odd bar lengths, and that’s on a per clip basis. If you go “off the grid” and just use sequencer modules, you might be able to get rig something up, but you won’t have the beauty of the core step sequencer.

[@Steelichi9]

Yes, the core sequencer is really where I would like to see the different time signatures. It’s so good, workflow wise. Thanks so much for the reply and I will look into your suggestions.🤙🏼

[@matthewpreston1396]

Looks awesome, and great demo! Is it heavy on the CPU? I have an iPad Air 2 and I’m just wondering whether that would run it okay?

[@benrichards4554]

Hey matthew, as far as I know it runs good. All modules are heavily optimized. Once you add in audio units or run REALLY big racks or projects you’ll run up the CPU, but it’s all in all very efficient.

[@matthewpreston1396]

@@benrichards4554 excellent. I actually run a modular synth store, so really shouldn’t even be interested in this, but you know how it is! :) the GAS never sleeps....

[@benrichards4554]

Nice! Where at? It will be fun to try and recreate/approximate some of your favorite modules in Drambo.

[@Payan8]

I would love to see an 808 module.

[@Payan8]

I know it’s possible but I’m new and need a walk through lol

[@benrichards4554]

patchstorage.com/808/ not mine, so even better!

[@Payan8]

@@benrichards4554 thanks for the quick reply. I was talking about 808 bass and gliding notes

[@benrichards4554]

Stay ‘tuned’ then :)

[@Payan8]

@@benrichards4554 thanks!

[@Grinchy4376]

Is there a way of making more than 5 different patterns at the top of the screen?

[@benrichards4554]

I don’t think there is a limit. You can scroll through them if that area of the screen fills up

[@Grinchy4376]

Ben Richards thanks! It worked! This app is so cool. 👍🏾

[@bjamminsincebirth3494]

Can I use my own effect within Drambo?

[@benrichards4554]

Hi Benjamin, how do you mean? You can use Audio Unit effects now. There will be multichannel audio input/output support coming soon, if you’re talking about external effects.

[@bjamminsincebirth3494]

@@benrichards4554 I figured it out. You can add any effect of your own under Audio Unit processor. All my apps are available. This is the best app next to BM3. It’s definitely in my top 5. Wowwwwwwww

[@redbirdsaraceno]

How do you save sounds you’ve created ? i dont see that in the manual

[@benrichards4554]

You can save instrument racks as presets. build it in a rack to begin with (under generators - instrument rack), or hold on your left most module and then slide over to highlight all modules in the sound (or just tap select all on the menu that opens from long hold. Then copy/cut, and paste into a rack (from the module selection menu).

[@redbirdsaraceno]

Ben Richards Great thank you

[@djsun1]

The app sounds fantastic sonically so far really grabbed my ears. Quick question how do you use a Bluetooth midi controller i.e. an op-z to control in stand alone mode, haven’t tried it in aum yet. I couldn’t find anything in the manual right off the bat, thanks in advance!

[@benrichards4554]

ONEd SUN I think you could do this in AUM or any daw that supports Bluetooth midi. I do not believe Drambo standalone supports Bluetooth midi.

[@djsun1]

Ben Richards thanks for that figured that might be the case

[@EnriquePage91]

You can always just use AUM to send the midi to the standalone, but I’d just go all AUV3 tbh.

[@djsun1]

Enrique Raphaël Page Pérez yeah no biggie just was curious if using aum all the time was the only solution for midi input or if it was possible to route multiple midi channels for separate device configurations

[@ion677]

Any word on release date?

[@rulindachatt]

It’s out now and on sale!

[@benrichards4554]

it's out now!

[@perrypelican9476]

I wonder why it's limited to 8 voices. Every app with voice limits always eventually increase it. I wonder if it's planned to get users excited to renew their passion for the app. Like hey, did you hear that super app just raised the number of voices from 8 to 5 million. Yippeeee. Really Great tutorial. I love straight forward, no nonsense tutorials, that are more full of jokes and unnecessary crap. Yours is perfect. Thanks. You said attentuator at one point. Did you mean attenuator? I'm not trying to bug you. I am not great with theory and terminology.

[@benrichards4554]

My vids are full of mistakes :) yes it looks like attenuator is the right term. I know called an oscillator a filter somewhere too. Voices, not sure why the limit is 8, but it’s only per rack. You can have many racks in one track and each can have 8 voices.

[@EnriquePage91]

It’s probably because of performance: Polyphony tends to require you to “duplicate the instrument”. Think of a monophonic synth - to turn it into a poly: inside of a Host app, you could load several instances and have them set up to use independent individual channels so that you can trigger multiple instances of the same monophonic synth at the same time. Even apps that are “poly” generally do this, the only difference is they do it all inside a single instance (AUV3). If you add “8 voice polyphony” and a voice on your synth consists of 3 oscillators and 3 filters (as an example ) then 8 voice polyphony would require your iPhone or iPad to load into memory and process on the cpu, 8*3 oscillators and filters. Essentially it would be quite similar to loading 8 instances of the same monophonic AUV3 and then doing the same channel trick - the difference would only be that with AUV3 instances, you would have to hold in memory the GUI of all of them (even if it’s the same GUI for all of them, each instance could be “different” so I’m suspecting it probably has to load in memory the same graphics all over again for each instance on your host), so it would be even worse for memory. Then there’s also independent settings and all of that stuff “per instance”, so ideally if your instrument has polyphony you will always be better off using that instead of making a monophonic instrument into a polyphonic by kind of “creating a patch”. Given the complexity of this app, I can imagine 8 voices being a limitation because of memory constraints (either imposed by the actual device’s memory limits or artificially by Apple - in the past AUV3s used to have a memory usage limit, not sure if this is still the case as I heard it was going to change) and CPU usage. Feel free to ask questions, I’m not the best at English and tend to explain things in a convoluted manner because of this.

[@matiasorpi]

Hey ben..amazing tutorial. Can Drambo play polyrithms?

[@benrichards4554]

It may come in the future in some official way. But you can get there in a lot of different ways currently...the sequencer modules/time modules, arpeggiators, etc. Check out patchstorage for ideas! There are a few different attempts at recreating the Moog Subharmonicon, sequencer included.

[@Khordmaster]

Just bought it! And I have no idea what I am doing haha! Hoping this will help :)

[@benrichards4554]

Enjoy this wonderful tool!

[@Khordmaster]

@@benrichards4554 thanks dude! I have no modular music making experience and limited "creating sounds" experience, but a lot of music making experience on keyboards apps etc. Was wondering if this app would be recommended to someone like me? Is it straightforward to get started and having fun?

[@benrichards4554]

Yes I would equate it to sound legos or a sandbox environment. It’s easy enough to create a simple sound (hook up an oscillator to a filter to a vca) and then as you’re more comfortable, start trying more unconventional structures.

[@Khordmaster]

@@benrichards4554 very cool looking forward to diving in and "discovering". Hey bro if u have a sec would love for you to check my latest upload. And ambient track Im working on in Korg gadget 🤟🏾

[@wul01]

Can you have different track lengths? Is step jump per track?

[@benrichards4554]

Currently you can not have different track lengths or speeds, but the Jump component is a work around at the pattern level (for length).

[@wul01]

Ben Richards thanks for the reply, I bought it and realised the step jump was a workaround, it an impressive app, actually it’s probably not a workaround, it’s the actual method.

[@creationbeatsuk]

Ffs... Ive been using "cut" wrong my entire life, I thought it just deleted, I didn't realise you could paste something you cut, I was always so mad that cut was so close to copy 😭😭😭

[@benrichards4554]

New year new cut + paste options Chop Sawce!

[@yourfriendasmund1073]

Hi Ben

[@benrichards4554]

Hello my friend!

[@TRaddcliff]

Nice that you can barely hear the app over the overpowering voice. Levels.

[@benrichards4554]

Thanks for the feedback! Will try and watch out for this.

[@robertablanca6469]

😴