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orDrumbox for Windows User Manual

orDrumbox for Windows (ordrumbox.exe, Windows 64-bit) — version 0.1. On macOS, Linux and other systems, use the web version.

1. Getting started

Installing

Download the release zip (ordrumbox-v<version>-windows-x64.zip) and unpack it. It holds ordrumbox.exe and an assets folder; keep them side by side. The assets folder holds the demo library, the kits and their samples, the scales, the synth presets and the generation styles. No installer is needed.

First steps

1. Start ordrumbox.exe. The demo library opens on its first pattern.
2. Press Space (or click PLAY) to start and stop playback.
3. Click an empty step of the grid to add a note; click a note to select it; click the selected note to delete it.
4. Click a track's name to select the track: the track editor on the right shows its settings.
5. Pick a STYLE in the header, or press B, to make the pattern again in a style.
6. Press F1 at any time for the list of keys.

Where your work is kept

Everything is saved automatically: the library one second after each edit and on quit. There is no "unsaved changes" state. The files are in the user data folder, %APPDATA%\orDrumbox:

To start again from the demo, use Help › Factory reset... (see section 20).

2. The window

The window always keeps the same parts, whatever is being edited:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Menu bar: File Edit View Pattern Generate Play Song Kit Help │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Header: PLAY  BPM  PATTERN  BEATS  KIT  STYLE ↻ AUTO … VIEW  │
│ Status line: last action · undo / redo · song                │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────┤
│                                             │                │
│  Main editor (one of):                      │  Track editor  │
│   grid · piano roll · song · synth          │  (F2)          │
│   (or the kit editor over them)             │  + note editor │
│                                             │                │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┤
│ Output panel: master Vol · Comp · Flt (always shown)          │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

F3, F4 and F6 toggle: pressed again, they go back to the grid. In the song panel, piano roll and synth editor, Esc also goes back to the grid.

Colours

A deep ground with neon accents, one role each: pink for titles, the selection and slider handles; cyan for labels, sliders and knobs; lime for play, what is on and the playhead; yellow for values, the active tab and button. Each track has its own colour (pink, cyan, yellow, violet, orange, lime, then round again), used for its stripe in the grid, its notes, its notes in the piano roll and its clips in the song panel. C or View › Next colour scheme cycles through five schemes: Indigo, Amber, Deep sea, Crimson, Toxic. The choice is saved.

3. Knobs, sliders and lists

All editors use the same controls.

• Lists open on a click (or Enter / Space): arrows to move, a letter to jump, the wheel to scroll, Enter to choose, Esc to close.
• Focus: Tab / Shift+Tab move the keyboard focus through the controls of the editors; Esc gives the keys back to the grid.
• LEDs (small on/off lights) switch an effect, an LFO or a mode on and off.
• While playing, a setting moved by an LFO shows the LFO's current value.
• A value outside its range is brought inside it, and the control shows the value actually used.

Confirmations

Everything that removes or replaces work asks first — Enter goes on, Esc or a click cancels: deleting a track, a clip, a song row, an arrangement, a kit's sample or a synth preset; clearing a track or a step holding several notes; random notes over a track's notes; compacting tracks; loading or importing a song; replacing an existing file on export. Deleting a single note happens at once (and can be undone).

Undo

Every edit is one undo step: Ctrl+Z undoes, Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) redoes, up to 50 steps. The Edit menu names the step it will undo or redo. Kit edits, synth preset edits and master settings are saved directly and are not undo steps.

4. Menu bar

The menu bar lists every command with its shortcut. Commands that cannot run are greyed out; on/off commands show a box (filled when on). Click a title, or press F10 or Alt alone, then use ← → between menus, ↑ ↓ between items, Enter to run, Esc to close. Commands ending in "..." ask for a name, a file or a folder.

File

Edit

View

Pattern

Generate

The Generate menu also lists the learned styles with the patterns and measures they rest on (see section 15).

Play

Song

Kit

Help

5. Header (toolbar)

Under the menu bar, after the logo, a row of labelled groups:

The three knobs remake the lines at once from the pattern's seed: the same values always give the same lines.

6. Status line and action log

The line under the header shows the last action or message, what undo and redo would do, and the song position while a song plays. Errors (a file that cannot be read, a value that was refused) are shown there too. A click on the status line opens the action log: everything done since the app started, newest first. Scroll it with the wheel, the arrows, Page Up/Page Down, Home/End.

7. Pattern grid

The grid (F5) shows the pattern's tracks as rows of steps, 4 beats per page; the page follows the playhead while playing and the cursor otherwise.

A track row

• Colour stripe — the track's colour; with V, a VU meter.
• M / S boxes — mute / solo.
• Name — the instrument (KICK, SNARE, CHH…). Green when the track is in auto mode. Under it, what it plays: its sample (kit/file) or its synth preset (synth BASS5).
• Volume slider — the track's volume.
• Steps — notes in the track's colour, brighter with velocity; a mark at each beat, the loop point at the track's loop length.

Mouse

Right-click menus

Keys

8. Track editor

Down the right edge (F2 shows or hides it). It edits the track of the cursor or of the selected note. From top to bottom: the sample bar, the knob bar, five tabs, then the note editor.

Sample bar

The sample's detected note, length, peak level and envelope with the decay end marked. Load replaces the track's sample with a WAV file.

Knob bar

FX tab

Four sub-tabs, Rev, Dly, Sat, Flt, each with an on/off LED. Touching a control of an effect that is off switches it on.

Sound tab

LFO tab

One LFO per setting. Choose the setting with Target; its LED switches that LFO on or off.

Loop tab

Gen tab

How the generator treats this track (see section 15).

A value ending in * is the style's; a double-click gives a value back to the style. 4→6 means the header knobs make it play 6.

Advanced ▸ unfolds more settings:

Var Hits and Var Notes are variation budgets: 100 gives 16 units per pattern; a velocity or pitch change costs 1, a silence, fill or ghost 3. The chances say how those units are spent. The header's VARY knob scales them.

9. Note editor

Under the track editor. It shows the selected note, else the step under the cursor, else the track's first note.

Knobs

Tabs

A cycled note plays when (loop + Offset) mod Cycle = 0.

10. Piano roll

F4. The track editor's track on a grid of steps (the list next to the title picks another track), 4 beats per page, pitches from MIDI 12 to 108 with a keyboard on the left. It opens on the track's pitch.

• Notes are drawn by velocity; a bar on top marks a probability (purple) or a cycle (blue).
• Retriggers, arpeggio steps and euclidean fills show as ghosts at their steps and pitches.
• While playing, the playhead moves (the page follows) and the sounding notes light up.

Mouse

Right-click menus

Keys

11. Song panel

F3. A song is the library: its patterns and one or more arrangements. An arrangement places patterns as clips on a timeline of measures.

Layout

• Arrangement grid (top, full width): a ruler of measures; one row per pattern used, named on the left (a pattern gone from the library keeps its row, in red); each clip a bar over its measures, in the pattern's colour.
• Pattern list (bottom left): the library's patterns, and the selected pattern's description (click to edit).
• Song info (bottom right): the song's name and description (click to edit), its date, the arrangement list, and the buttons Save, Save as, Load, Export, Import, New, Delete.

Buttons

Mouse

Right-click menus

Keys

While the song plays, the grid follows it page by page. Each edit is an undo step and moves the song's loop to the end of the last clip.

12. Synth editor

F6. Edits the synth preset of the track editor's track (else the first preset). Every change plays at once and is saved half a second later to synth_presets.json.

Preset bar

The built-in presets include one per base sound of the kits: KICK_SYNTH, SNARE_SYNTH, TOM_SYNTH, CLAP_SYNTH, COWBELL_SYNTH, CHH_SYNTH, OHH_SYNTH, CRASH_SYNTH. A deleted built-in preset comes back at the next start.

Cards

Four tabs of cards. Each card has a power button; touching a control of a card that is off switches it on (an oscillator to 0.5, FM to 0.3, the noise to 0.15, an LFO onto the filter, the mod envelope onto the filter). A knob an LFO moves is purple and follows it. The pills under the cards show the modules in use.

OSC tab

FLT tab

MOD tab

ENV tab

13. Kit editor

Ctrl+K. Shows the current kit's samples and the selected sample's details. Kits are saved to kits.json; new sample audio to samples/.

While the kit editor is open, Q–P still play tracks, except E and R (tracks 3 and 4), which are kept for the kit editor. Built-in kits: real, matt, electro, open, ropen, generated, human, 8bits, delagrange, vintage, punchy.

14. Output panel

The strip along the bottom: the master bus, in three tabs. Settings play at once and are saved to settings.json.

15. Generation, styles and auto mode

Three levels

1. The header: STYLE, ↻, AUTO and the ENERGY / COMPLEX / VARY knobs act on the whole pattern.
2. The Gen tab of a track: Auto, Lock, a new line for the track alone, and its main settings.
3. Advanced in the Gen tab: the manual, Groove, Engine and full Compose settings.

D, S, A (Generate menu) make the drum, bass or chord lines alone, in auto mode. Shift+B makes a new pattern in the chosen style.

Styles

Fourteen styles: techno, house, drum & bass, hip-hop, rock, funk, disco, reggae, swing jazz, bossa nova, samba, salsa, afrobeat, trap (with aliases such as rap, dnb, ragga). A style sets the meter (jazz and afrobeat are ternary; bossa and salsa run over two measures for their clave), the tempo, the swing, the tracks, the bass and chord variants and progression, a fill, and for each drum part where hits are typical, required or forbidden, the accents, hits per measure, complexity, syncopation, coupling to another part, variation, ghost notes and rolls.

Learned styles

Tag patterns with a style's name (or alias) and the style moves toward what they play — each part's weights and hits, the required steps, the swing — in proportion to the measures seen. A tag that names no style becomes a style of its own. Fewer than 4 measures teach nothing. The Generate menu and the STYLE list show them.

Auto mode

A track in auto mode (its name in green; Z toggles it) follows the song form as it plays — intro, verse, chorus, break…: a new line at the start of each section (the drums thinner in quiet sections); a drum line then moves a few hits from loop to loop and the style's fill fills its last loop; bass and chord lines hold through the section. These lines are saved but are not undo steps. Exports regenerate them on their own copy. X puts random notes on the focused track.

16. Files: save, import, export

Exports

Every export asks for its folder: the last one picked, at first exports/ next to library.json if it exists, else the home folder. Enter on [ Use this folder ] writes there. A file of the same name is replaced only once confirmed.

Imports and drag & drop

File picker

Commands ending in "..." open the built-in file picker. ↑ ↓, Page Up/Page Down, Home/End or the wheel move; a letter jumps; Enter (or a second click) opens a folder or chooses; Backspace goes to the parent folder; Esc cancels. It lists only the files the command takes; on Windows the drives are listed above a drive's root. It starts in the home folder, then where it last chose.

17. Keyboard shortcuts

Keys are read by position, like the web version: on an AZERTY keyboard, [ ] are the two keys right of P, Q–P start at A, and A and Z are the Q and W keys. Page Up/Page Down and the keypad - + work too.

Play

Edit

Sounds and generation

Files and windows

18. Audio signal flow

Each track

Sample or synth voice → Filter → Saturation → Reverb → Delay → Volume → Pan → Mix bus

Master bus

Mix bus → Pre-gain → Compressor → Low cut → High cut → Volume → Soft limit → Output (and spectrum)

The soft limit leaves the signal unchanged under 0.9 and rounds it toward ±1 above, so loud mixes do not clip harshly.

19. AI clients (MCP)

An MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor…) can drive the running app. The client starts ordrumbox.exe --mcp, which passes each tool call to the open window: the edit shows at once, is one step of Edit › Undo, and is saved with the library. The window listens on 127.0.0.1 only, with a token written to mcp.json. With the window closed, a call answers that orDrumbox is not running. While a confirmation is open in the window, the tools are refused.

In the client's settings, with the path to the program:

{ "mcpServers": { "ordrumbox": { "command": "C:\\path\\to\\ordrumbox.exe", "args": ["--mcp"] } } }

The tools cover patterns (list, create, select, rename, duplicate, remove, notes, tracks, tempo, length, tags, description), generation (generate, regenerate, toggles, macros), arrangements and clips, song files, kits and samples, synth presets, the master bus, exports (WAV, MIDI, JSON), MIDI import, play, stop, undo and redo, and the playback state.

20. Updates, About, factory reset

Updates

At start, at most once a day, the app asks GitHub whether a newer release exists (with the system's curl; the request carries only the program's name and version). A newer one is shown on the status line and Help › Download orDrumbox … opens its page. Nothing is downloaded or installed by the app. Help › Check for updates checks now. To stop the check at start, set "check": false under updates in settings.json.

About

Help › About orDrumbox shows the build (also in the window title and with ordrumbox.exe --version) and the folders in use: the assets and the user data folder. A release is named by its version alone (0.1.0); other builds add dev, the commit and its date.

Factory reset

Help › Factory reset... moves your files out of the way — library.json, kits.json, settings.json, synth_presets.json, samples/, songs/ — and reloads everything from the assets, as at first start. Enter restores, Esc or a click cancels.