Drum trigger sequencer designed to create shuffled offgrid beats.
Stolperbeats, roughly translating to "beats tripping over themselves", is a drum trigger sequencer designed to create shuffled beats influenced by the gritty push-and-pull grooves from the golden age of hip hop.
We've always been fascinated by taking our beats offgrid to give them more fluidity and life. This module allows you to easily dial in and seamlessly switch between all the shuffle, feeling and groove you would, in the past, painstakingly nudge together in a DAW.
Stolperbeats is a drum pattern sequencer, designed to enable Flying-Lotus / J-Dilla style shuffled swings. Stolper is "to trip over yourself" in German, so a Stolperbeat is a beat that trips over itself.
We love those beats and used to build them for our tracks in the DAW. But we quickly got annoyed by how long it took and how long it took to change them just a little after the fact. So we dug into the set of rules on how real-life drummers like Questlove from The Roots or Perrin Moss from Hiatus Kaiyote play these shuffles and produce them reliably on stage. We also dragged an enormous amount of tracks into Ableton and had a look at how the beats we were interested in were made.
At the same time, modular is our weapon of choice when it comes to making music, and looking at the sequencers out there it became clear that there were none that really focussed on off-grid beats. Soooooo we made one, and started to build and code prototypes around that concept.
The hardware ins and outs
- 8 tracks of trigger outs:
- 6 for instrument patterns - Kick, Snare, Hihat 1 (closed), Hihat 2 (open), Perc 1, Perc 2;
- 2 utility patterns - Subdiv (swung clock out), Sync (straight clock out)
- CV, MIDI, encoder control over pattern select for the 6 instruments
- 7 curated depths of shuffle from straight to completely drunk ( = degrees of Questlove)
- x 4 styles of grooves each from Dilla to "classic MPC Style" Swing
- x 4 styles of feeling in which the instruments are shuffling in sync or are ever so slightly delayed relative to each other
- CV, MIDI, encoder control for depth of shuffle
- 64 banks with 24 patterns for each instrument - 4 of them filled with patterns we enjoyed best while playtesting
- 2x CV out with simple bar-sync ramp generator
- Linear drumming, Tap tempo, Clock in 1ppq - 24ppq, for clock out use Subdiv (swung clock out) or Sync (straight clock out)
- MIDI I/O: minijack, accepts both Arturia and Korg, outputs either /or (switch in the back)
- On-machine editing for patterns and MIDI out mapping
- Settings are saved to SD card so can be easily backed up every once in a while
HP:Â 26 HP + 3 HP Expander
Depth: 35 mm – Skiff friendly
Power:Â +12V 280 mA, -12V 13 mA
Product Overview
Drum trigger sequencer designed to create shuffled offgrid beats.
Stolperbeats, roughly translating to "beats tripping over themselves", is a drum trigger sequencer designed to create shuffled beats influenced by the gritty push-and-pull grooves from the golden age of hip hop.
We've always been fascinated by taking our beats offgrid to give them more fluidity and life. This module allows you to easily dial in and seamlessly switch between all the shuffle, feeling and groove you would, in the past, painstakingly nudge together in a DAW.
Stolperbeats is a drum pattern sequencer, designed to enable Flying-Lotus / J-Dilla style shuffled swings. Stolper is "to trip over yourself" in German, so a Stolperbeat is a beat that trips over itself.
We love those beats and used to build them for our tracks in the DAW. But we quickly got annoyed by how long it took and how long it took to change them just a little after the fact. So we dug into the set of rules on how real-life drummers like Questlove from The Roots or Perrin Moss from Hiatus Kaiyote play these shuffles and produce them reliably on stage. We also dragged an enormous amount of tracks into Ableton and had a look at how the beats we were interested in were made.
At the same time, modular is our weapon of choice when it comes to making music, and looking at the sequencers out there it became clear that there were none that really focussed on off-grid beats. Soooooo we made one, and started to build and code prototypes around that concept.
The hardware ins and outs
- 8 tracks of trigger outs:
- 6 for instrument patterns - Kick, Snare, Hihat 1 (closed), Hihat 2 (open), Perc 1, Perc 2;
- 2 utility patterns - Subdiv (swung clock out), Sync (straight clock out)
- CV, MIDI, encoder control over pattern select for the 6 instruments
- 7 curated depths of shuffle from straight to completely drunk ( = degrees of Questlove)
- x 4 styles of grooves each from Dilla to "classic MPC Style" Swing
- x 4 styles of feeling in which the instruments are shuffling in sync or are ever so slightly delayed relative to each other
- CV, MIDI, encoder control for depth of shuffle
- 64 banks with 24 patterns for each instrument - 4 of them filled with patterns we enjoyed best while playtesting
- 2x CV out with simple bar-sync ramp generator
- Linear drumming, Tap tempo, Clock in 1ppq - 24ppq, for clock out use Subdiv (swung clock out) or Sync (straight clock out)
- MIDI I/O: minijack, accepts both Arturia and Korg, outputs either /or (switch in the back)
- On-machine editing for patterns and MIDI out mapping
- Settings are saved to SD card so can be easily backed up every once in a while
