Bounce doesn't live in the notes you pick. It lives in where they sit, how long they last, how hard they hit, and what you leave out. Twenty-six patterns you can play, edit, measure and export as MIDI — plus a FLATTEN button that strips the performance — quantize to the grid, gates rounded up, every velocity at 100 — so you can hear how much of the groove was in the notes and how much was in the playing.
Two bars at 32nd-note resolution, so the off-grid spacings further down this page are actually drawable. Pick a brush, click to place notes, and load any pattern from the catalogue to take it apart. Everything here exports as MIDI at the current tempo with the swing baked in.
Syncopation counts notes that land on a weak position and then hold through a stronger one. Straight 16ths score zero — density is not syncopation.
FLATTEN is the A/B. Across the whole library it only drops total syncopation from 158 to 143 — because placement is composition and quantizing does not move an offbeat note off its offbeat. What it destroys is the other two thirds of this page: the gates all become full length and every velocity becomes 100. Play any pattern with it on and off.
Reading the roll. The four colours are the four beats of the bar — red is beat 1 — so a pattern that has stopped agreeing with the grid is visible at a glance. Vertical rules are 16ths; the faint half-rules between them are 32nds, which is where the 2.5-step spacing lives.
Where a note lands relative to the kick is the whole game. Each card shows its measured syncopation, its note count and how many bars it takes to come home. Turn the kick on and listen for the argument.
The most underused parameter in the piano roll. Same notes, same timing, different gate — one bounces, one sits there like furniture. If a bassline feels flat, shorten everything by 20% before you touch anything else.
Velocity only grooves if it's a pattern, not a random spray. Write an accent map the way a drummer plays one. And check your synth actually routes velocity somewhere audible — if it isn't mapped to filter or amp, none of this does anything.
Catchy in dance music almost always means short and rhythmic. Three notes you can hum beat a beautiful eight-bar line every time. All examples in A minor.
The specific clicks. Live 12 Suite.
The spacing table is the one to pin up. Pick a note spacing that isn't a whole number of 16ths and the pattern stops repeating every bar — it walks across the grid and comes home some bars later. That walk is what makes hypnotic loops feel like they're going somewhere.
| Spacing | In steps | Comes home after | What it feels like |
|---|
| Gate length | Result |
|---|---|
| 20–35% | Blippy, percussive. Bass reads as a rhythm part. |
| 40–60% | The bounce zone. Most house basslines live here. |
| 70–90% | Rolling and connected. Techno rumble territory. |
| 100%+ | Legato. Flat and sustained — kills bounce, good for pads. |
| overlapping | On a mono synth with glide: portamento slides. 303 behaviour. |
| Velocity | Use |
|---|---|
| 115–127 | Accent. One or two per bar, no more. |
| 85–100 | The main body of the pattern. |
| 55–75 | Secondary hits. The "and" of a hat pattern. |
| 25–45 | Ghost notes. Felt, not heard. This is where groove hides. |
About the syncopation figure. It's a simplified version of the standard Longuet-Higgins and Lee measure: every 16th position gets a metric weight, and a note scores when it lands on a weak position and holds through a stronger one that has no note of its own. It rewards notes that contradict the metre and ignores density entirely — which is why straight 16ths score zero and four offbeat 8ths score four. It is a description, not a grade; plenty of great patterns score low.
Change one thing at a time. Every technique here is a variable. If you stack four of them into a loop at once you won't know which one made it move, and next week you'll be back to guessing. Loop four bars, change one parameter, listen for eight bars, decide.
All audio synthesised live in the browser — the voices demonstrate timing, not sound design. MIDI exports carry the current tempo, swing and gate. All examples in A minor.