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 1.2.0.

Twelve lanes, one per pad of a drum rack. Each lane threads a number of beads as evenly as possible around a necklace of steps — Bjorklund's algorithm — and from there you take over: turn the necklace, add and remove beads by hand, accent them, ratchet them, give them a chance of playing, nudge them early or late.

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

What it does

Twelve lanes: One per drum-rack pad, each with its own step count, bead count, rotation, accents, ratchets, probability and micro-timing.
Patterns and chains: Sixteen patterns per lane, and a chain per lane so patterns follow each other without you touching anything.
Scenes: Sixteen snapshots of the whole kit and all the chains together, which is how a handful of patterns turns into a song.
Scatter: SCATTER rearranges what you hear in real time without changing the underlying pattern. Press it, mangle the bar, let go, and the pattern is exactly where you left it.
Two separate saves: The Kit Map (lane labels and MIDI note mapping, one per drum rack) and the Grooves (beads, patterns, scenes and everything else) save and load independently, so loading one never disturbs the other.

The Euclidean engine and the pattern workflow take after the Euclid step mode of a well-known hardware sequencer, trimmed down to what a drum rack in Live actually needs.

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.

Installation notes are on the front page.

Source

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