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2. Getting your kicks for free with Beat Machine

1

Download Beat Machine for free now and we’ll give you a tour of this flexible beat maker. You can cycle through the options using the top five tabs. Here is the Pads screen complete with sounds loaded on the first 10 pads (of the 16 available) using the sounds from the Acoustic Room Kit. 2

If you want to change the currently loaded Kit or Pattern for one of the extra ones (10 and 11 respectively) supplied, simply hit the Load option and you will get this screen: kits down the left and Patterns in the middle together with complete Song options.

3

The Pattern tab is for sequencing and allows you to place individual sounds, or a run of the same one per channel, very easily indeed. You can use the swipe strip on the far left to move up and down across the 16 sounds if you have a lot loaded in.

4

The Mixer tab allows you to adjust the levels of all 16 pad sounds, and there are options to mute, pan and solo each one, plus add useful delay and reverb effects. It looks a little basic but remember this is a free app! 5

Over on the right of the screen you have options to change the Envelope (ADSR) and Filter (Frequency and Q) parameters, plus a drop-down menu allows you to change the sample on each pad so you can create your own kits, and very easy it is to do too. 6

Finally you can edit individual beats by highlighting the ones you want to change and then hitting some of the options to the right. There’s a Filter and a Reverse button that allow you to drastically change each hit, for example.