You might already be familiar with Playbeat - it’s the powerful creative groove randomizer relied on by thousands of producers to bring variation and originality to their drum patterns. By using advanced musical algorithms, Playbeat generates continuously evolving drum grooves that perpetually change and develop, enabling producers to effortlessly create new and unique drum patterns at the click of a button.
Audiomodern have just released Playbeat 3.0, the next generation of their flagship drum software - and it’s about to change the game for music makers. Bringing a host of composition-focused features to the application, Audiomodern have developed the world’s smartest and most flexible tool for creative algorithmic drum programming and opened up a world of new possibilities for producers, composers and musicians.
With Playbeat 3.0, music makers can create personalised packs of presets and sounds, export these outside of the plugin to use elsewhere, share them with fellow producers, and even sell them online. This makes Playbeat a phenomenally powerful tool for musical collaboration.
Let’s dive into how Playbeat works. Unlike an ordinary step sequencer, Playbeat generates beats and patterns for you by using algorithms to randomly determine the steps, density, pitch, flam strokes, volume and pan of each individual drum sound in a groove. Users are able to drag-and-drop samples of their own into Playbeat, before hitting the Randomize or the Remix button to create a new pattern using that kit, which is made up of algorithmically generated parameters.
For each parameter - steps, density, pitch, flam, volume and pan - users can specify maximum and minimum values, which Playbeat will work within when generating patterns. This allows producers to introduce variation while retaining a level of creative control over the process. Each of the parameters can also be locked, so if the user wants to keep the pitches of their drum sounds consistent, but randomize all other parameters, that’s a possibility.
Playbeat offers the user MIDI export, so once a pattern is generated that you’d like to keep, you can export this into your DAW to use in your project. There’s also audio export functionality, allowing you to export your stems or patterns as an audio file, which you can save to your hard drive. On top of that, Playbeat is capable of MIDI output, meaning producers can trigger external drum machines - hardware or software - by sending MIDI data out from the plugin.
Further controls include shuffle Playbeat’s shuffle function, which allows the user to introduce swing to their drum patterns, and the grid control, which determines the rhythmic increments into which the step sequencer is divided and the speed at which the drum pattern plays. Another fantastic feature is the Infinity button, which triggers Playbeat to generate a new pattern after a duration specified by the user, creating a new drum groove automatically after a certain number of bars. This creates constantly evolving drum beats which develop rhythmically after every repetition.
With Playbeat, no two drum grooves will ever be the same. The software gifts producers with infinite rhythmic possibilities by harnessing the power of algorithmic randomization, bringing a new level of creativity to your music. There’s simply no other plugin out there with this exact functionality - Playbeat is the most powerful tool for rhythmic pattern creation, and their latest version has changed the game for producers, musicians and beatmakers.
Playbeat forms part of Audiomodern’s powerful suite of music-making software that’s designed to function as your personal compositional assistant in the studio or on the stage, including Chordjam, Riffer, Filterstep and Gatelab.
Visit Audiomodern’s website to find out more about Playbeat.