PocketBM

(Updated 18 Sep 2024: will be available in Playdate Catalog soon)

This is a beat making app for Playdate. Now this little cute yellow device is all you need to make cool beats on the move!

PocketBM is especially useful for game developers to create and add their own game music into the game. When making music straight from the device itself,  what you hear is what you get, no more tedious conversions or guessing work! Music playback using the built-in audio engine of course is also much faster than the streaming based FilePlayer. 

The file that PocketBM created is just a plain JSON file, so is very easy to understand. To playback the music that you created in your own projects, you can either make use of the open source player code on github:

https://github.com/dr-watson-hk/PocketBMPlayer

or write your own.

Tutorials:

Features:

• 16 tracks, each track can be either a sample track or a synth track
• Import custom samples for sample tracks
• Selectable waveforms for synth tracks
• Dynamic editing: edit notes while the beat is playing
• Basic sound design tools: ADSR, filters, delay and bit crusher
• Track name + colours (or dithering patterns to be precise)
• Soloing single track
• Mute tracks
• Panning and volume for each track
• Song arrangement labels
• Loop markers
• Copy/move/clear sections with the help of loop markers
• 18 scales/modes
• One chord track (track#8, chord will be played instead of a single note, not for the chromatic scale)
• Autosave for recovery in case of crash or exit app by accident

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Functions of Assistant Menu 1:

• Play + Scroll: play the beat and scroll the sequencer at the same time
• Solo Track: play only the track at the cursor
• Set Loop Start: set the starting step of the loop
• Set Loop End: set the ending step of the loop
• Reset Loop Markers: clear loop marks
• Move Loop 2 Cursor: move the section within the loop markers to the cursor position
• Dup Loop 2 Cursor: duplicate the section within the loop markers to the cursor position
• Dup 1 Trk in Loop: duplicate only one track within the loop markers to the cursor position
• Clear All in Loop: clear all the notes within the loop markers 
• Clear 1 Trk in Loop: clear the notes of one track only within the loop markers 
• Enable Loop: toggle on/off looping
• Mute Track: mute the track at cursor
• Trk Name: set the name of the track at cursor
• Volume: set the volume of the track at cursor
• Panning: set the panning of the track at cursor
• Edit Sound: change the synth of the track to different samples or wave forms
• Add Label: add arrangement label at the cursor position
• Remove Label: remove arrangement label at the cursor position

Functions of Assistant Menu 2:

• Pitch: change pitch of the note at cursor
• Len: change length of the note at cursor (in unit of steps)
• Velocity: change velocity of the note at cursor
• Fill Every Beat 4Bars: put default notes at every beat for 4 bars
• Fill Odd Beats 4Bars: put default notes at odd beats for 4 bars
• Fill Every Step 4Bars: put default notes at every step for 4 bars
• Fill Even Steps 4Bars:  put default notes at even steps for 4 bars
• Fill Odd Steps 4Bars:  put default notes at odd  steps for 4 bars
• +12 Semitones @Trk: add 12 semitones to all notes in the track
• -12 Semitones @Trk: minus 12 semitones to all notes in the track
  
• +Velocity 10% @Bar: increase 10% of velocity to all notes in the bar
  
• -Velocity 10% @Bar: decrease 10% of velocity to all notes in the bar
  
• Dup Bar This Track: duplicate the bar of the track at the cursor to the next bar position
• Dup Bar All Trks: duplicate the bars of all the tracks at the cursor to the next bar position
• Clear Bar: clear the notes of the bar at the cursor position
• Make Bar an Arp: use the note at the first step of the bar as the base to fill out an Arp pattern
• Arp Type: choose from 7 different Arp types for filling the Arp

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Notes:

• Track#8 is the chord track. It is set up with 3 voices so a 3-note chord will be play for this track instead of a single note, no inversion yet. It is recommended to use sample for this track because when using other wave forms for this track tends to produce noise/distortion.
• Max song length is set to 1280 steps for now. For the default 120BPM, this is equivalent to 2.67 mins. Will try to increase the length in the future updates.
• The playback engine of Playdate is working in the unit of steps. For sample tracks, if you set the note length to 1 step, even the sample itself is longer than that, it will be cut off after 1 step. You may want to adjust the note length in order to playback the entire sample. The max note length is 64 steps for now.