SESSION

How to use the machine

Everything here works from the keyboard. If you've used an MPC the layout will feel familiar; if you haven't, start at the top and you'll have a beat running in about two minutes.

Getting in

Open the machine and you'll meet the SESSION panel. Connect a wallet, sign the message it shows you, and the panel checks your balance on chain 4663. One signature, no transaction, no gas — signing proves the address is yours, nothing more.

ACCESS GRANTED
Holding 12,400 SESSION.

Under the threshold, you'll see exactly what you hold, what's needed, and the contract address to buy against. The Check again button reads the chain fresh — use it after a purchase lands rather than reloading.

Playing the pads

Sixteen pads, arranged the way the keyboard is. The bottom row of the grid is the bottom row of your keys, so your hand position on the keyboard maps to your hand position on the machine.

1
2
3
4
Q
W
E
R
A
S
D
F
Z
X
C
V
Drums: cymbals up top, hats and percussion next, snares and toms, then kicks and the 808 along the bottom.

Clicking a pad both plays it and selects it — the sequencer row and the inspector on the right follow whatever pad you last touched.

Loading your own sounds

Drag an audio file onto any pad and it replaces that pad's synth voice. WAV, MP3, OGG, M4A and FLAC all work. Right-click a pad to clear the sample and get the original voice back.

Uploaded samples don't survive a reload yet — they live in browser memory only. Saving a session stores your patterns and settings but not the audio files themselves. Persistent sample storage is the next thing being built.

The five banks

The BANK dropdown in the transport switches which instrument the sixteen pads are playing. Tab cycles through them in order.

All five play at once on the same timeline. Switching banks changes what you're editing, never what's playing — a pattern holds drums, bass, chords and melody together.

The four melodic banks are laid out in C minor across two octaves, highest notes at the top. You can't hit a wrong note by accident, which is the point. To move a pad off the scale, select it and use the NOTE slider in the inspector.

Sound modules

A module retunes every pad at once to a style. It isn't a sample pack — no audio files are involved. It's a set of values for the same synthesis engine: sweep depth on the kick, decay on the hats, how long the 808 rings, where the swing sits.

Boom bap and trap are included. The others unlock by burning SESSION on the modules page, where every one plays before you decide.

Loading a module replaces your pad settings for that bank but leaves your patterns alone — the same beat played through a different kit. Save first if you've dialled something in you want to keep.

Programming a beat

Hit Space to start. A boom-bap pattern is already loaded on A4 so there's something to take apart.

The wide row of sixteen buttons is the currently selected pad across one bar. Click a step to switch it on or off. The row underneath — the pattern overview — shows all sixteen pads at once; click a name on the left to jump to editing that pad, or click any square in the grid to toggle it directly.

Steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 are the downbeats and are drawn brighter. The small purple dot above the odd-numbered steps marks the ones that swing moves.

Clear Row wipes the selected pad. Clear Pattern wipes only the bank you're looking at, so you won't lose your bassline while cleaning up the drums.

Swing

Swing delays every second sixteenth note. At 50% nothing moves and the beat is dead straight. Higher values push those notes later, which is what makes a pattern feel human instead of typed in.

The readout under the sequencer shows the delay in milliseconds at your current tempo, so you can see what the percentage is actually doing. Swing is per-project, not per-pattern.

Shaping a sound

The inspector on the right edits whichever pad is selected.

Choke is what makes a closed hat silence an open one. Open HH and CL HAT are both in group 1 by default, which is why they never overlap. Set two pads to the same number and the newer hit always wins.

Reset returns the selected pad to defaults. It only touches that one pad.

Reverb and delay

The FX RACK button opens two effects shared by every pad. Rather than putting an effect on a sound, you send an amount of that sound into a shared effect — the same way a real desk works, and the reason a whole kit can share one reverb tail without sounding like sixteen separate rooms.

Set the amount per pad with the VERB and DELAY sliders in the inspector. A pad with a send above zero shows a small coloured dot in its corner.

Reverb

Size picks the room. Damp rolls off the top of the tail — more damping is a duller, more natural space. Low cut keeps bass out of the reverb, which is almost always what you want; a kick drum in a big reverb turns to mud.

Delay

Time is locked to the tempo, from a thirty-second note up to a half note, including dotted and triplet. Feedback is how many repeats. Tone darkens each repeat so echoes fall back rather than piling up.

Patterns and song mode

Eight pattern slots, A1 through A8. Each holds a full bar across all five banks. The hit count under each name tells you which ones have something in them.

Click a pattern while stopped and it switches immediately. Click one while playing and it goes yellow — queued — then changes cleanly at the top of the next bar rather than cutting mid-phrase. Click the queued one again to cancel. Shift plus a number does the same from the keyboard.

COPY duplicates the current pattern into the first empty slot, or asks where to put it if they're all full. That's the fastest way to make a variation: copy, then change two things.

Song mode

Eight slots, each holding a pattern and a repeat count from 1 to 32. Click a slot to assign. Playback runs the slots in order and loops back to the start. Empty slots are skipped, so you don't have to fill them in order.

Saving your work

SAVE stores the whole machine: all eight patterns across all five banks, every pad's settings, the song arrangement, FX parameters, tempo and swing. The first save asks for a name; after that the same session keeps being updated.

PROJECTS lists everything you've saved, newest first. Click one to load it — that replaces what's currently in the machine, so save first if you're mid-idea. Clicking the name in the transport renames the session.

Saving is manual on purpose. Nothing is written until you ask for it.

Exporting audio

EXPORT WAV renders to a 16-bit stereo file at 44.1 kHz. Pattern mode renders the current pattern twice; song mode renders the whole arrangement. The tail setting adds silence at the end so reverb and delay have room to finish instead of being cut off.

Rendering happens faster than real time and offline, so nothing is recorded through your speakers — the file is exactly what the machine would play, including every FX and tuning setting as they are right now.

Every shortcut

KeyWhat it does
SpaceStart or stop the sequencer
14 QR
AF ZV
Play and select the sixteen pads
TabNext bank
Shift + 18Switch pattern, queued to the next bar while playing
Right-click a padClear its loaded sample
Drag a file onto a padLoad that audio onto it

When something's wrong

No sound at all

Browsers block audio until you interact with the page. Click any pad first. If it's still silent, check that the tab isn't muted — Chrome mutes per-tab and it's easy to miss.

The gate says the chain is unreachable

CHAIN UNREACHABLE
Couldn't reach 4663 — that's the network, not your wallet.

Chain 4663's public RPC rate-limits under load. This is temporary and has nothing to do with your balance. Wait a moment and press Check again.

My balance is right but it still says locked

The check reads the address you signed with. If your wallet holds SESSION in a different account, switch accounts in the wallet — the page reloads automatically — and connect again.

Timing feels loose when other tabs are busy

Audio is scheduled against the sound card's own clock, so playback stays accurate, but the on-screen playhead can stutter if the browser is struggling. What you hear is right even when the display lags.

The machine is tilted and it bothers me

TILT in the bottom-right corner turns the perspective off. It's already off on phones and for anyone with reduced-motion turned on.