Getting started with Tactus MK1

A quick guide to making your first beat. Tactus MK1 is a pocket-sized sampler: you load eight sounds onto pads, play them with your fingers, and program patterns with a step sequencer.

The big picture

Everything lives in a project — your eight pads, your patterns, and your mix settings. The app opens on the Home screen where you pick a project or start a new one. Inside a project there are four screens. Swipe left or right to move between them, or tap the row of dots at the bottom.

The pads are the heart of it: eight colored squares in a 4x2 grid. The same eight pads appear on the Sample, Play, and Step screens — they are always the same eight sounds.

Your first beat

1. New project. From Home, tap New Project.
2. Get a sound. Swipe to Sample, stay on the SYNTH tab, type 808 kick, and tap Generate. Press Play to hear it, then Use to drop it on the pad.
3. Add a few more. Two-finger tap a different pad to target it, then generate another sound — try snappy snare and closed hi-hat.
4. Play it. Swipe to Play and tap the pads to hear them.
5. Program a pattern. Swipe to Step, pick a sound with the number buttons, then tap cells in the grid to place hits.
6. Hit play. Tap the Play button in the top bar — your pattern loops. Tap the BPM number to change the tempo.

The Sample screen — making sounds

Two ways to create a sound, chosen with the MIC and SYNTH tabs at the top. On the SYNTH tab, pick the target pad, type a plain, specific description (warm sub kick short tail, bright glassy bell, dubstep wobble bass), or tap a starter chip, then Generate — the on-device Synth Engine builds the sound. Audition with Play, get a fresh take with Try again, or keep it with Use. Name a musical note for tuned sounds so they stay in the same key. On the MIC tab, hold a pad to record and release to stop; the optional vocoder robotizes your voice through a synth, and new takes can stack on top of the existing sound.

The Play screen — performing

Tap a pad to trigger its sound. The FX panel below always controls one focused pad — two-finger tap a pad to focus it. Drag the XY pad to set filter cutoff and resonance, use the volume, delay, drive, and reverb sliders, and tune the pad with the pitch slider. Hold mode chooses one-shot or sustain, and Mute silences the pad. You can also two-finger drag on a pad: vertical for volume, horizontal for pitch.

The Step screen — programming patterns

A grid of 16 steps, read left to right and top to bottom. Choose a sound with the numbered buttons, then tap cells to turn hits on or off; the bright moving border is the playhead. The BARS strip adds bars to a pattern, and the pattern strip holds multiple patterns like verse, chorus, and fill — switch while playing and the new pattern launches cleanly at the end of the loop. Each pattern has its own tempo and length but shares the same eight pads.

The Master screen — the mix

Master volume with an output meter, reverb with a wet/dry mix and presets, tempo-synced delay with time, feedback, and mix, and a limiter that stops the output from clipping — leave it on. Tap the BPM tile to set the tempo. The per-pad delay and reverb sends in the Play FX panel feed these master effects.

Projects: saving and sharing

Projects auto-save as you work — no save button needed. The back button returns to Home with your work kept; recent projects appear as cards you can tap to open or long-press to rename or delete. The share menu can Render to Pad (bounce the pattern onto a pad), Bounce Audio (export an audio file), or Export Project (save the whole project). Undo and redo are in the bottom corners.

Gesture cheat sheet