Quick start.

The first time you open Orbeat, a short tour points at eleven things. This page follows the same stops in the same order. The tour tells you where things are; here I explain how each one behaves and why it's there.

Beats in orbit. Take a quick tour?

Tap Take the tour to walk through the stops below, or Skip to start playing. The tour shows once. You can run it again any time from Settings → Replay intro.

Each ring is a voice. Tap a ring to drop a beat.

Each ring is a lane: one voice of the kit. Step 1 sits at 12 o'clock and the playhead runs clockwise. Tap a step to place a hit, tap it again to take it away. The playhead sweeps the mandala as it loops.

The lane strip under the circle picks which lane the panels below it edit. The selected lane's chip carries a lock, M (mute) and S (solo). Lock, mute, and solo lanes to build the groove layer by layer. A locked lane is left alone by the dice and by clear.

On the Velocity tab, each step of the selected lane is a bar. Drag across the bars to draw velocity per step, for accents that live.

The circle starts with six lanes and grows to twelve. Tap + at the end of the lane strip to add one. Grow past six lanes and the circle opens a second page of rings in its own color set; flip between pages with the corner chevrons, or swipe across the circle. Lanes seven to twelve are part of Orbeat Pro.

Tap the center to hear it — the little face keeps time with you.

The center of the circle starts and pauses the loop. Pause keeps your place: press it again and the loop picks up where it stopped. The little face on the play button dresses for your kit and pops its mouth on every kick.

The number beside it is the tempo. Drag up or down on it to scrub, or tap it to type a value from 40 to 240 BPM. While Orbeat follows an external clock or an Ableton Link session, the tempo belongs to that clock and the display is read-only (see MIDI & sync).

The center picks up where you paused. This one always starts the loop from the top.

The |▶ button left of the tempo sends the pattern back to step 1. If the loop is playing, it jumps back without the audio stopping; if it is stopped, it starts playing from the top. Use it to audition a change from the downbeat instead of wherever the circle happened to be.

The button only appears while Sync is off. Under an external MIDI clock or Ableton Link, the clock owns where the bar starts.

Tap the dice for a fresh pattern, instantly.

The dice beside the kit rolls a new pattern on every lane that isn't locked. The trash can next to it clears every unlocked lane. To roll or clear a single lane, use the dice and trash on the Velocity panel: they act on the selected lane only, and the rest of the groove keeps going.

A good habit: when one lane is right, lock it, then keep rolling the others.

Tap steps on the ring to place beats yourself.

Open the Generator tab. Each lane runs in one of three modes: Manual, Euclid or Prob. Manual plays exactly the steps you drew.

Two controls apply to all three modes:

• Swing pushes the feel off the grid. Swing counts per ring, not per bar, so on a 7-step ring the shuffle wanders around the bar.
• Steps sets the lane's length, from 1 to 16. Give each lane its own length and let the phases drift in and out of sync. That is polymeter, and it is part of Orbeat Pro.

Spread N beats evenly around the ring — instant grooves.

In Euclid mode the lane is generated: E(pulses, steps) spreads that many hits as evenly as possible around the ring. One stepper sets the pulses, the other rotates the pattern around the ring.

Like what you hear? Tap the ring to write it in: the generated pattern becomes hand-drawn steps you can edit. Switching the lane back to Manual keeps the generated pattern too.

Steps fire by chance, so the loop never feels robotic.

In Prob mode the lane plays the steps you drew, but each one fires by chance, at the lane's Probability setting. Every pass rolls again, so the loop never repeats exactly. An export captures one pass, the same way a recording would. Probability is part of Orbeat Pro.

Keep your loops in the project library.

The stacked squares at the top open the project library. Save the beat under a name, tap a project to load it, swipe right on it to rename, swipe left to delete. A project keeps all eight patterns, your lanes and kit, and each lane's sound and MIDI settings.

The library is part of Orbeat Pro. Without it, Orbeat still keeps the beat you're working on: it is saved automatically and is there the next time you open the app.

Bounce it out as audio, or as a MIDI file for your DAW.

The share icon at the top opens Export: a stereo WAV of what you hear, or a MIDI file. Export covers lengths, file names and what ends up in the MIDI file.

Hook up a MIDI controller or follow an external clock — set it up in Settings → MIDI.

Note input is always on: plug in a controller and hit something. Orbeat listens on channel 10 by default, and each lane starts on a General MIDI drum note. MIDI & sync has the note map, MIDI out, Ableton Link and clock sync.