The Studio

The Studio is where you make things. It has a copy of the PO-32’s faceplate that works like the hardware, step rows for writing patterns and an editor with every parameter of each drum sound.

The Studio starts on a built-in 909-style kit. Your work in the Studio isn’t kept when you close the app, so save anything you want to keep to the Library with Save to library.

The Faceplate

The faceplate mirrors the PO-32 key for key. It works in two modes, like the hardware:

• sound: the 16 pads pick a voice and play it. The step rows and the voice editor follow the voice you pick.
• pattern: the pads switch between the 16 patterns. A pad with notes on it shows as filled.

The other keys:

• bpm cycles the tempo through 80, 120 and 140.
• write turns the pads into the 16 steps of the picked voice, so you can tap a beat in the way you would on the device. Press write again, or switch to sound or pattern mode, to leave write mode.
• acc works in write mode: arm it, then tap steps to accent them.
• play starts and stops the pattern.
• FX is greyed out: live effects are performed on the PO-32 itself.

The two pots work like the hardware knobs. The pitch pot (knob A) sets the picked voice’s oscillator frequency, and the morph pot (knob B) moves between the voice’s A and B sounds. The pad lights follow the playhead while a pattern plays.

The PO-32 plays four voices at once, one per column of pads. Voices in the same column share a lane, so only one of them can play on any step. If you turn on a step that a lane-mate already uses, the new voice takes it over.

To play the faceplate on its own, select the fullscreen button above it. On a phone you can also long-press a pad: see On Your Phone.

The Step Rows

Next to the faceplate, the step rows edit the picked voice across the 16 steps:

• steps: turn the voice on or off on each step. A number in a cell means another voice in the same lane has that step.
• accent: accents apply to the whole pattern, as on the device.
• fill: how many times the voice retriggers on a step, from 1 to 15. Click to switch between 1 and 2, then drag up or down, or use + and -, to change it.
• morph: a per-step A/B position. Click to set it at the current morph position, then drag or use + and - to adjust.

Under them, the all lanes strip shows the whole pattern. Press any cell to jump to the voice that plays it. Arrow keys move around the rows, and Enter turns a step on or off.

Above the rows:

• M and S mute and solo the picked voice.
• Duplicate copies the current pattern into the next pattern number and switches to it. It replaces whatever was in that pattern, so check first (you can undo it).
• Clear empties the current pattern.

Chain Patterns

The chain row builds a longer sequence from your patterns. Select + Pattern to add the current pattern to the end of the chain, up to 16 entries. Each entry’s menu can view, move or remove it, and Clear chain starts again.

To hear the chain in order, switch the Sequencer panel from Loop pattern to Play chain.

Design a Sound

Each of the 16 voices has two sounds, an A end and a B end. The Morph slider moves between them, and the side it’s on is the one you’re editing: left of centre edits A, right of centre edits B.

The editor has four groups, 21 parameters in all:

Group	Parameters
Oscillator	Wave (sine, triangle, saw), Freq, Pitch Mod, Mod Amount, Mod Rate, Attack, Decay
Noise	Filter (low-pass, band-pass, high-pass), Cutoff, Reso, Env, Attack, Decay
Mixing	Mix (oscillator against noise), Distortion, EQ Freq, EQ Gain, Level
Velocity	Osc Vel, Noise Vel, Mod Vel

• Drag a knob or fader to change it. Hold Shift for fine control, or scroll over a selected knob.
• Click a readout to type an exact value, such as 180 Hz. Press Enter to keep it or Escape to cancel.
• Cmd-click (or Ctrl-click) a control to reset it to its neutral value.
• Select the pencil next to the voice name to rename it.

The dice menu randomises or mutates the sound: Randomize A, B or both, or Mutate to nudge it a little. Tick groups under Keep to leave them alone. Swap A and B, Copy A to B and Copy B to A sit next to it.

Play, Preview and Bounce

• Play (or Space) starts and stops the pattern.
• Preview (or P) plays the voice you’re editing, at the current morph position and vel.
• bpm sets the tempo (40 to 240), and swing adds swing (0 to 12). vel is the velocity for Preview and auditions.
• Bounce saves the pattern, played twice, as a WAV. With Play chain on, it bounces the whole chain. Mute and solo apply.
• Undo and Redo (Cmd+Z and Cmd+Shift+Z, or Ctrl on Windows and Linux) cover the last 50 changes to the kit, patterns, chain, tempo and swing.

On desktop, WAVs and other exports save straight to your Downloads folder.

What you hear in the app

The app plays sounds with the open-source libpo32 synth, so they’re close to the PO-32 but not identical. Pattern playback and Bounce play each voice halfway between A and B at a fixed velocity, and they don’t play per-step morph. Preview and the pads use the morph position and vel. Anything you send to the PO-32 plays through its own engine, per-step morph included.

Press ? (or F1) to see every keyboard shortcut.