Tool 05
Step Sequencer
Sixteen steps, five voices, a tempo control and a polyrhythm divider. Every sound is synthesised in the tab, and the pattern exports as a MIDI file or a rendered WAV.
Sequencer Workspace
Tempo and export
Using the Grid
Click a cell to toggle it. The first column is the start of the bar, and the row labels are the voices. The playhead is the brighter column that moves as the pattern runs. Audio starts only when you press play, so nothing is ever triggered by loading the page.
Right-click a bass or lead cell to change its pitch, in semitones. Hold Shift while right-clicking to move by a single semitone. The range runs from MIDI note 36 up to 72 and then wraps.
Polyrhythm
The lower voice always plays sixteen steps to the bar. The divider button changes how often the upper voice lands: every third, fourth, fifth or seventh step. Three against four is the classic pairing, and it produces the hemiola that makes a simple pattern feel unsettled. The highlighted steps show where the upper voice falls.
What the Exports Contain
The MIDI file is type 0, one bar long, with sixteenth-note resolution at 480 ticks per beat and the tempo written as a meta event. It imports into a DAW as a single clip with the timing of what you hear.
The WAV is rendered offline at 44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo, two bars long, with a limiter on the output so a dense pattern does not clip the file.
The Voices
- Kick — a sine sweep from 150 Hz down to 46 Hz with a short click.
- Snare — filtered noise with a bandpass at 1.9 kHz.
- Hat — highpassed noise at 7.5 kHz, closed.
- Bass — a detuned saw pair through a resonant lowpass at 480 Hz.
- Lead — a triangle wave for testing melodies.
Questions
What Is Polyrhythm Here?
The lower voice always plays sixteen steps to the bar. The upper voice lands on every third, fifth, seventh or sixteenth step instead of every fourth, which puts two different pulse lengths against each other. The highlighted steps show where the upper voice falls.
What MIDI File Does This Export?
A type 0 file with one bar of sixteenth notes, 480 ticks per beat, and the tempo and track name written as meta events. It opens in any DAW and imports as one MIDI clip.
Is the Audio Generated or Sampled?
Generated. Every sound is synthesised in the browser, including the noise-based snare and hat, so there are no samples to download and no licences involved.