Beat Maker — User Manual

What is the Beat Maker?

The Mazmazika Beat Maker (a.k.a. Beat Atelier) is a full beat-production studio that runs entirely in your browser — nothing to install. Program drums and melodies on a step sequencer, layer instruments, shape the sound with a real mixer and effects, arrange a full song, then record, export, or share your beat.

It is built for every rhythm tradition, not just 4/4: Arabic iqaa'at, Indian taals, Flamenco compás, Balkan odd meters, and microtonal scales (Bayati, Rast, Saba) are first-class citizens. Every sound is synthesised live in Web Audio — no sample packs needed — and you can drop in your own audio whenever you like. Every change auto-saves to your browser, so you can refresh and pick up exactly where you left off.

Getting started

Open the Beat Maker from the left sidebar (or Audio Tools → Beat Maker). On your first visit a short guided tour points out the main areas — you can skip it and reopen it any time from Help → Take the Tour. The same Help menu also holds the built-in User Guide and the Command Palette (⌘K), which searches every action in the studio. The whole studio sits inside the familiar Mazmazika "cosmic" workspace, with the tool rail on the left and a tidy toolbar across the top.

The layout has three bands you will use constantly:

• The top toolbar — five grouped menus (Grid/View, Library, Enhance, Project, Help), the tempo and time-signature controls.
• The arrangement & channels — the section strip with the ✦ Vary with AI button, the Add a channel chips, and the step sequencer where you actually build the beat.
• The floating transport — a glass bar pinned to the bottom with Play / Stop, Undo / Redo, and one-click Quick Export buttons that follow you as you scroll.

Tip: the appearance Tweaks panel (theme, palette, background, typeface) lives behind the small gear button on the right — collapse it to give the studio the full width.

Start with a rhythm

The quickest way in is to load a ready-made groove. The Start with a rhythm launcher opens automatically on a fresh session (and any time from Library → Ready Presets). Browse 230 presets across genres — Hip-Hop, Lo-Fi, House, Techno, Funk, Latin, Middle East, Jazz, Flamenco, Indian, African, Brazilian, Japanese and more — filter by category chip, or search by name, genre or vibe. Preview a card, then click Load. Prefer a clean slate? Pick Blank canvas.

The step sequencer

Each instrument is a channel (a row) divided into beats. Click a beat to turn it on or off; the playhead sweeps left to right as the beat plays, triggering the lit cells. Stack several channels — kick, snare, hats, bass, pad — to build a full groove.

• Cell editor — click any cell to open a popover with quick patterns (rest, ¼, two ⅛, triplet, 4×16, gallop, reverse gallop, dotted-8, flam, drag, roll, ghost, syncopate). Below it you can set the cell's velocity, subdivide the beat into 1–16 slots and click each slot to cycle silent → ghost → normal → accent. Right-click a cell to clear it instantly.
• Performance feel — give a cell Chance (the % it fires), Ratchet (1–8 sub-hits inside the cell) and Micro (nudge it ±25% earlier or later). These show up as small badges on the cell.
• Channel tags — on each channel head: M mute, S solo, F auto-fill (turns every 4th bar into a generated fill suited to that instrument), and ✕ to remove. Click the channel name to rename it.

Instruments & channels

Add voices from the Add a channel row. Use the quick chips for the common types, or open Browse all sounds to pick from the full library of 173+ synthesised instruments, organised by family.

• Drum — choose a kit (Acoustic, 808/Trap, Middle-Eastern, Latin, Flamenco, Indian Classical and others) and a voice within it (kick, snare, hats, doum/tek, congas…).
• Bass and Lead — melodic synth lines with per-step pitch.
• Chord — pick an instrument (pad, Rhodes, piano, strings, guitar and more) plus the project key and scale; chords follow your scale degrees.
• Arp — an arpeggiator that reads your chord channel.
• Audio — record from your mic or upload your own file (see Your own audio below).

Transport, tempo & groove

• Play / Stop from the floating transport bar — or just press Space.
• Tempo — type a BPM (40–240) or hit Tap at your desired speed to set it by ear.
• Time signature — click the signature pill for Common meters (4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 12/8), Odd meters (5/4, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8…), Indian taals (Teen Taal, Jhaptaal, Rupak, Ektaal), Arabic maqam cycles (Maqsum, Malfuf, Baladi, Samai…), or write your own.
• Swing (0–75%) and Humanize (0–100%) live in the Enhance menu — loosen the timing so the beat breathes instead of sounding robotic.

Four ways to see your beat

The View menu (top-left) switches how the sequencer is drawn — pick whatever fits the music:

• Grid — the classic matrix; best for editing and seeing everything at once.
• Wheel — a radial view with channels as concentric rings and beats around the rim; ideal for compás and iqaa'at (accent markers appear automatically for maqam signatures).
• Ribbon — flowing tiles per channel that scroll horizontally for long bars.
• Pads — a 4×4 MPC-style grid; tap a pad (or your keyboard) to trigger a channel, and use REC to capture live taps.

Patterns, sections & song mode

Each pattern is a one-bar loop. The arrangement strip turns patterns into a full track: add sections with the + Add tile, set how many times each repeats (the ×4 stepper), and reorder them with the ‹ › arrows. Click a section to edit it — the one marked EDITING is what the sequencer below shows; Shift-click sections to chain them into a play selection (the ⛓ button), or play the whole song end to end.

Vary with AI

Hit ✦ Vary with AI (on the arrangement strip) to send the current pattern to Claude Haiku, which returns one tasteful variation as a new pattern — your original stays untouched. The ▾ button opens the AI Co-producer menu with more moves: Vary, Build-up (denser, for transitions), Breakdown (sparser, for breathers), Fill the empty bars (only touches rests, edits the current pattern in place), and Style-match… (describe a reference vibe to adapt to).

Mixer & FX

Open Enhance → Mixer & FX for a full mixing desk. Per channel you get volume, pan, high-pass and low-pass filters, drive, bit-crush, reverb send and delay send, plus mute/solo, sidechain and per-channel polymeter. The master section adds a 3-band EQ, output limiter, shared reverb and tape-delay buses, and live LUFS / peak loudness meters with one-click targets for Streaming (−14), Podcast (−16), Broadcast (−23) and Club (−9).

Compás Lab

Library → Compás Lab is a dedicated space for learning the world's rhythm cycles — 36 canonical patterns across Arabic iqaa'at, Indian taals, Flamenco compás, Latin/Afro-Cuban claves, African bells and Balkan aksak meters.

• Listen — hear the canonical cycle with traditional accents (doum, tek, ka, palmas), as spoken syllables, percussion, or both.
• Train — a tempo trainer that ramps from a starting BPM up to a target over several cycles.
• Clap-along — enables your microphone, detects each clap and scores your accuracy and timing drift in real time.
• Chart — opens a printable score (notation, accent dots, syllables, origin and tempo range) ready to Print or save as PDF.
• Add to project — one click drops the cycle into your project as a new pattern to build on.

Your own audio

Use the Audio chip in the Add-a-channel row to Record from your microphone or Upload a .wav / .mp3. It drops in as an audio clip on its own lane — a waveform you can move and resize along the bar, fit to one loop or a whole section, and play at natural speed or stretched to fit. Recorded and uploaded audio is included when you export.

Present mode & MIDI

• Present (View → Present) — a full-screen, audience-facing stage view of your beat: the project name, tempo, key and pattern up top, an animated large-scale visual of every channel's hits, a Play button and a one-click Save image for sharing. Press Esc to come back to the studio.
• MIDI input — plug in any USB/Bluetooth MIDI keyboard in a Web-MIDI browser (Chrome or Edge) and the MIDI pill lights up in the toolbar; notes play live through your pitched channels, and ● keep captures the last bar you played onto the grid.

Save, projects & autosave

Everything auto-saves to your browser as you work — the Projects drawer even reminds you that autosave is always on. Use Project → Save to My Projects (or ⌘S) to keep named versions in My Projects, and reopen them from the same drawer. A full undo/redo history (⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z) keeps your edits safe while you experiment. Start fresh any time with Project → New project.

Export & share

Open Project → Export selected or Export project for the full export platform. The footer's Quick Export buttons bundle your loops straight to a ZIP in one click.

• Stems package (featured) — a ZIP with the full mix, every channel rendered to its own WAV (with effects), plus MIDI, MEI score, JSON and printable notation.
• WAV bounce — render the loop to an audio file.
• MIDI · MEI · JSON — standard files you can open in other software (JSON is re-importable here).
• Video (social) — export a video of the beat with its visualisation, in 9:16 vertical, 1:1 square or 16:9, over 1–8 bars.
• Loop Art (PNG) — a shareable 1600×900 image.
• Notation — a print-ready Western score in a new tab.
• Share link — the whole project encoded in a URL you can send to anyone.

Handy keyboard shortcuts

• Space — Play / Stop
• ⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z — Undo / Redo
• ⌘K — Command palette (search every action)
• ? — User Guide
• ⌘S — My Projects
• ⌘+ / ⌘− / ⌘0 — Zoom in / out / reset
• Esc — close any overlay

Tips

• Start from a preset (or Vary with AI), then make it yours by editing cells and swapping sounds.
• Add a little Swing and Humanize so the groove feels human.
• Use Solo/Mute in the mixer to focus on one part while you program it.
• Save to My Projects early and undo freely while experimenting.
• Any screen works — the studio adapts to phones and tablets (channels stack into one column and you can pinch-zoom the grid), though a desktop monitor is the most comfortable for long sessions.

Troubleshooting

• No sound? Click anywhere on the page first (browsers only start audio after you interact), then check the channel and master volumes and your device volume.
• Slow to load? The Beat Maker is a large app — give it a moment on first open, and use an up-to-date Chrome or Edge.
• MIDI keyboard not detected? Use Chrome or Edge (Web MIDI), then reconnect the device and tap anywhere in the studio once — MIDI access starts on your first interaction.
• On a phone? The studio is fully responsive: the toolbar and channel chips wrap, the sequencer fits your screen width, and you can pinch-zoom for detail work. If something looks cramped, rotate to landscape or use the grid zoom (⌘+ / ⌘−).

Related tools

Build melodies on the Virtual Piano, keep time with the Metronome, find a song's chords with the Chord Analyzer, or split a track into stems with the Vocal Remover.