Find your way around

Most of Drambo’s buttons are icons, so this map gives each one a name and says what it does. Pick a view, then tap or click any control. The names in capitals are the ones this guide uses for them, such as NAV BAR for the sequence navigation bar.

The strip across the top stays put whatever you’re doing. The left end holds the project-wide controls; the right end holds help and the buttons that open other views.

The big area at the top shows the rack of whichever track is current. The coloured column at its left edge is the track itself — its output and settings — and the modules follow from left to right in the order the signal flows through them. The + at the end opens the library browser to add another.

At the right edge sit the track’s output knobs, which send it to the Master and the two send tracks to begin with. See Route a track’s audio.

Everything about working with modules — adding, moving, connecting, modulating — is in Modules and racks and the sections after it.

Under the rack editor is a row of pads, one per track: Main, 1–8, A, B and Master in a new project. Tap one to make that track current. That row is the top edge of the clip launcher — tap the chevron at its right to open the launcher full size, with a row of clips under each track and a column of pattern buttons down the side.

Track pads respond to swipes as well as taps — see Working with track pads — and the launcher has a whole chapter of its own, starting with The launcher and arranger.

The row of cells below the track pads is the step sequencer for the current clip. It is visible almost all the time, whatever else you’re doing. Under it is a row of buttons, from left to right:

The bottom area plays the current track. Each pad is a note and shows its name, and whatever you play last is what a tapped step receives (see Put notes on steps). TRK switches the pads into track mode, which you need when recording several tracks at once (see Record live).

Version 2.57 added on-screen pitch bend and modulation wheels, which you can play and record like knobs. See Pitch bend and mod wheels.

Drambo shares one screen between four areas, so you’ll often want to give one of them more room. Two chevrons at the right edge do it: one at the end of the track pads, one at the end of the sequencer’s button row.

On iPad, the settings can also show the rack view at 110% of its normal size.

UNDO does two jobs. Tapped on its own, it undoes your last step sequencer edit. Held down, it turns the next thing you tap into a clear button — the quickest way to wipe a clip, a pattern or a parameter’s automation.