Snorkel Audio has updated Little Drum Machine to v1.1.
So we got carried a little away. Version 1.1 was supposed to be a small update. It ended up adding an effects section, polyrhythms and polymeters, a sample editor for every one of the 32 slots, and a new batch of presets. Everything is in the free update, on iPad, Mac and Windows.
Polyrhythms and Polymeters
Snorkel Audio says “the 16-step grid is lovely right up until you want the hats in seven and everything else in four”:
- Switch Polyrhythm on in Settings and a pair of numbers, steps and length, appears next to every lane.
- Drag a lane’s length shorter and you get a polymeter: the same pulse, just on a shorter lap, drifting against the bar and slipping back into line on its own a few bars later.
- Leave the length alone and drag its steps instead, and that’s a polyrhythm: eleven cells sharing the same span as everyone else’s sixteen.
- A Phase switch decides whether lanes snap back together at every scene change or keep spinning through it, so the same grid can lock tight for a verse and quietly reshuffle itself for the next sixteen bars.
- Off by default, and off is exactly the classic machine it always was.
Delay, Reverb, Drive and Compression
LDM had a mixer but nothing to send anywhere, so reaching for a delay or reverb meant leaving the plugin. Now it has four effects built in, sends on the Mixer and character on a new FX tab: a delay that can smear into tape-style wow and saturation, a reverb with seven different rooms (an octave-up shimmer, a hard-gated 80s snare sound, a bright tail that stays out of the low end), a drive with five characters running from a gentle warm-up to a savage octave-up snarl on one drum at a time, and a compressor (a single knob in 1.0, now with its own row: Attack, Release and a Mix dial) that can squash the whole kit hard and still keep the kick’s attack poking through.
The Sample Tab
Loading your own samples was already possible; shaping them wasn’t. The new Sample tab turns any of the 32 slots into an instrument of its own: repitch a kick, clip a cymbal into a stab, stretch a tom into a rising fill, or turn a long crash into a swell.
New Presets
Three new Polyrhythm presets show off the clocks, including one that puts six lanes on cycles so out of step with each other the groove doesn’t properly repeat for thousands of bars. Breakcore, Industrial, EBM and Glitch show off the FX section. The rest of the bank picked up a touch of genre-appropriate delay, reverb or drive along the way.
Availability
Little Drum Machine 1.1 is free and is out now for iPadOS, macOS and Windows.
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