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@maru shared this instrument so you can build on it and use it in your DAW.

AvailableInstrument

Tetra Box

A sixteen-pad drum machine whose whole kit morphs across three faces at once.

About

A sixteen-pad drum sampler where the whole kit morphs at once. Every pad holds three versions of its sound, and one triangle control moves all sixteen pads between those three faces together.

The idea

A morphing sampler usually morphs one sound. Tetra Box morphs a kit. The three corners of every pad are aligned across the machine: corner one of the kick, the snare and the hat all belong to the same theme. Because the corners agree, one position on the triangle means the same thing for every pad, and dragging it walks the whole kit from one coherent character to another.

These are one-shots, so moving the triangle does not bend a hit that is already ringing. It changes what the next strike plays.

Controls

  • Morph X and Morph Y place the point inside the triangle. The default sits where all three themes weigh the same.
  • Decay shortens every pad's tail together.
  • Voices sets what a strike does to a pad that is still sounding: follow the kit's own setting, cut the previous hit with a short fade, or layer hits on top of each other.
  • Layout chooses which MIDI notes the pads answer to: Maschine (sixteen notes from MIDI 36, pad 1 bottom left), General MIDI drums, MPC bank A, or sixteen chromatic notes from C2 or middle C.
  • Fold Notes wraps notes outside the layout back onto the pads, so any MIDI stream can play the machine; switch it off to ignore them.
  • Each pad has its own Tune and Gain.
  • Level sets the output.

Choke groups cut across pads, so a closed hat still silences a ringing open hat.

Getting started

Play the pads from a MIDI pad controller; on Maschine's default layout they land without any remapping. Strike a few pads, then drag the morph point toward each corner of the triangle and strike them again.

The panel also shows Vary, Kit, Reverb and Ambience. These come from the browser version of the instrument and are not yet supported in every build.

How it works.

A strike arrives from a pad click, a keyboard row or MIDI in, with velocity taken from how high up the pad it landed. The pad's global morph point resolves to a lattice cell: up to three clips with barycentric weights.

One buffer source starts per loaded layer, each behind a gain carrying its equal-power blend weight times velocity squared times the pad's own gain. Vary, when it is up, wanders the strike point inside a radius around the morph position, so repeats select different neighbouring material rather than just jittering in level.

The pad's voice policy decides what happens to anything already sounding there, and the choke table cuts across pads independently. Decay trims each one-shot's tail as a fraction of its rendered length.

The three theme backdrops crossfade behind the translucent face on the same weights the sound is using, with the kit's declared canvas animation running underneath.

What would you make with Tetra Box?

Describe what you want to make. Build it with the Studio agent.

Goes well with.

Prototype

Percussion Synth

A sample-free drum synth with ten circuits and sixteen steps.