PlayStation
The machine

Single Hits

Landing single drums over the streams

The face buttons play single hits, over the streams or on their own. Out of the box they're arranged as a kit:

ControlDrum
CrossKick
SquareSnare
TriangleClosed hi-hat
CircleOpen hi-hat

The d-pad isn't part of this layer: it plays figures on the timekeeper's line instead of drums of its own.

Two behaviours govern how the pads sit against the streams:

  • Slightly early presses are pulled onto the beat. A hit aimed at the beat but landed a fraction ahead is caught onto the grid, so punctuating a running groove doesn't require machine timing. Late hits play when you play them.
  • Holding the open-hat button mutes the timekeeper. The closed-hat stream goes quiet while it's down, so an open hat rings where the closed pulse was. Release, and the pulse resumes.

The second one is a default, not a rule. Any pad can be set to silence any of the three machine lines while it's held, and every pad's note is movable - see Kits and voice mapping.