Homecrate Drum — 16-Pad Drum Sampler
Homecrate Drum is a 16-pad drum sampler and step sequencer, available as an AUv3 instrument plugin you can load directly inside Homecrate. It pairs a classic MPC-style pad grid with a late-’80s rack-sampler character engine — per-pad bitcrush, filtering, pitch, time-stretch, pan and velocity “humanize” — a built-in step sequencer that can trade MIDI patterns with your song, on-device sampling, and a preset system for saving complete kits.
🟢 New to drum machines? Skip to Quick Start below — you can make a beat in under two minutes.
🔵 Coming from hardware (MPC / S950 / SP-1200)? Pads map to General MIDI notes 36–51, each pad has bitcrush + LPF + pan, the step sequencer records in real time with optional quantize, and it can copy patterns to and paste patterns from your Homecrate timeline.
Quick Start
- Load Homecrate Drum as an AUv3 instrument plugin on an audio track in Homecrate
- The Init Kit loads by default — real acoustic-drum samples, ready to play
- Tap a pad — it triggers the sample and flashes neon green
- Tap the grid icon (⊞) in the header to open the step sequencer
- Tap cells to program your beat, then tap ▶ Play to loop it
- Tap the 📁 folder on any pad to swap in your own sample
Loading Homecrate Drum in Homecrate
See Loading & Removing Plugins. Homecrate Drum appears under the Instruments tab. Route a MIDI track to it via the AUv3 Instrument picker in the MIDI channel strip — incoming notes 36–51 map to pads 1–16.
The Interface
[SCREENSHOT: Full Homecrate Drum interface — header, 4×4 pad grid, master LCD]
Three regions:
- Header bar — kit name/number, transport, sequencer toggle, BPM, loop length, host-sync, presets
- 4×4 pad grid — 16 sample pads, each with a front face and a flip-to-edit back face
- Master LCD — the master filter, character-IR, output volume, and the on-device sampler
The Pad Grid
[SCREENSHOT: Pad front face and flipped back face]
Each pad has a front face (drum name, sample name, folder + flip icons, activity dot) and a back face you flip to for that pad’s sound controls.
Tap any pad to trigger its sample immediately — it plays as a one-shot to completion. Pads also respond to MIDI note-on on channel 1 and to the step sequencer. Velocity scales the hit. Touch is handled at the UIKit layer for zero visual delay.
Per-Pad Sound Shaping (flip the pad)
Every pad carries its own character engine. Flip the pad to reach these knobs:
| Control | Range | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| VOL | 0–100% | 100% | Per-pad output level (multiplied by velocity) |
| PIT (pitch) | ±24 st | 0 | Repitches the sample by resampling (±2 octaves). Glows green when non-zero. |
| SR (sample rate) | full → crushed | full | Lo-fi sample-rate reduction — dial down for gritty, downsampled drums |
| BIT | 16 → 4 bits | 16 | Bit-depth crush — 16 is clean, lower bits add quantization grit (floored at 4) |
| CUT (cutoff) | 20 Hz–20 kHz | 20 kHz (open) | Per-pad low-pass filter — tame cymbals, darken a snare |
| RES (resonance) | 0–100% | 0 | Emphasis at the filter cutoff |
Two more per-pad controls live on the front/flip area:
- PAN (−100% L … +100% R, center default) — per-sample stereo position. Equal-power pan so your kit can spread across the stereo field (toms panned across, hats slightly off-center, kick and snare centered).
- Character (−100% … +100%, off at 0) — velocity variance / humanize. Each hit’s velocity is randomly nudged so repeated hits breathe like a real player. The sign sets direction (− makes random hits softer, + louder) and the amount sets the spread. Most hits land near the middle, a few stray further — natural, not robotic.
Per-Pad Time-Stretch
- Stretch (on/off) with a Stretch Amount (0.5×–2×) time-stretches the sample without changing pitch — fit a loop or one-shot to a new length. Stretching is recomputed quietly in the background (it never silences the pad while it recalculates).
The pad signal chain is: bitcrush (SR + BIT) → low-pass (CUT + RES) → volume × velocity × pan, with Character shaping the velocity and Stretch swapping the source buffer. The whole per-pad chain can be bypassed from the master (see Bypass below) for a clean A/B.
Loading Samples
Tap the 📁 folder icon on any pad to open a document picker. Supported formats: WAV, AIFF, CAF, MP3, M4A, FLAC (anything the system can open). The sample is copied into Homecrate Drum’s private library so it stays available even if the original moves. The pad’s silkscreen name updates to the filename.
Pad Map
Homecrate Drum uses General MIDI drum notes — universal across drum machines and DAWs.
| Pad | Label | Note | Pad | Label | Note | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | KICK | 36 | 9 | HH PED | 44 | |
| 2 | RIM | 37 | 10 | LO TOM | 45 | |
| 3 | SNARE 1 | 38 | 11 | HH OP | 46 | |
| 4 | CLAP | 39 | 12 | LO-MID TM | 47 | |
| 5 | SNARE 2 | 40 | 13 | HI-MID TM | 48 | |
| 6 | LO FLR TM | 41 | 14 | CRASH 1 | 49 | |
| 7 | HH CL | 42 | 15 | HI TOM | 50 | |
| 8 | HI FLR TM | 43 | 16 | RIDE | 51 |
The pad labels tell you what each one is — the note numbers only matter when triggering from an external keyboard or controller.
The Master Section
[SCREENSHOT: Master LCD popup — filter, IR, volume]
The master LCD (tap to open its popup) processes the whole kit after the pads mix together:
| Control | Range | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Master Cutoff | 20 Hz–20 kHz | open | Master low-pass filter (18 dB/oct cascade) over the whole kit |
| Master Resonance | 0–100% | 0 | Emphasis at the master cutoff |
| Master IR Mix | 0–100% | 0 (dry) | Blends in a character “impulse response” for a colored, boxed console tone. Load your own IR or reset to the built-in “026S” impulse. |
| Master Volume | 0–100% | 100% | The whole instrument’s output level |
| Bypass | on/off | off | Bypasses the entire per-pad DSP chain (bitcrush + filter) — clean A/B against the processed sound |
The Step Sequencer
Tap the ⊞ grid icon to open the floating step sequencer (drag it anywhere).
[SCREENSHOT: Step sequencer overlay]
- Grid: 16 sixteenth-note steps per bar, one row per pad, 1–4 bars, scrollable
- Transport: Play / Stop / Record; a green playhead sweeps the current step
- Tap a cell to add/remove a hit (uses the pad’s default velocity); long-press a cell to edit that hit: velocity (1–127), pitch offset (±24 st), repeat count (1–8) and repeat spacing (1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 — ratchet rolls)
- Q (Quantize): on = recorded taps snap to the 16th grid; off = your exact timing is kept (and exported that way)
- Metronome: click during play/record, accented on the bar
- Loop Length: +/− stepper, 1–4 bars
- BPM / Host BPM / Host Transport: set 60–240 BPM manually, or follow Homecrate’s project tempo and Play/Stop automatically
- 🗑 Clear empties the pattern
Trading Patterns with Your Song (Copy / Paste MIDI)
The sequencer’s export bar has two buttons:
- copy midi — serializes the current pattern to a MIDI clip on the clipboard. In Homecrate, switch to the MIDI tab, long-press a blank MIDI track row, and Paste — the beat lands as a clip at the playhead. (Real-feel timing is preserved when Quantize is off.)
- paste midi — reads a MIDI clip from the clipboard and replaces the sequencer pattern. Copy a drum part from your Homecrate timeline (or another sequencer), paste it here, and practice that riff in isolation without touching the rest of your song. It snaps notes to the grid, maps pitches back to pads (only drum notes 36–51 land), auto-sizes the bars, and restores velocity, pitch, and ratchets.
[SCREENSHOT: Copy/paste MIDI buttons in the sequencer export bar]
Recording Your Own Samples
Homecrate Drum can sample directly into a pad. From the master LCD, tap REC to enter the sampler:
- Monitor — a live input waveform appears with a threshold line; set the threshold with the data wheel
- Arm — tap ENTER
- Record — capture starts automatically once the input crosses the threshold
- Edit — trim Start % / Stop % and set Fade In / Fade Out (ms); Redo to re-record, or Exit to apply the trim/fades and load the result into the target pad
When running inside Homecrate, the app feeds the input level and captured audio to the sampler automatically.
Kits & Presets
A kit is a complete snapshot of all 16 pads — samples, and every per-pad control (volume, pitch, lo-fi, filter, pan, character, stretch) — plus the master settings and IR. Kits are independent of the sequencer pattern (patterns save separately).
- Init Kit (
01 - Init Kit) is the default — real acoustic-drum samples recorded from an actual kit, ready to play out of the box. The header up/down caps cycle between the Init Kit and your saved kits (02…). - Two factory presets ship alongside: Neutral (all lo-fi/filter bypassed — pristine) and 026S (the vintage sampler character — mild bitcrush, tuned filters, a touch of console IR).
- Save Kit (↓): name and save the current kit. Preset Library (☰): load or swipe-to-delete saved kits.
Inside Homecrate, the loaded kit saves as part of the plugin’s project state, so reopening a project recalls the exact kit. Kits reference samples by filename against the shared sample library.
Tips
- Start with kick + snare, then add hats — a sparse beat that grooves beats a busy one that doesn’t.
- Add a little Character (+15–20%) on hats and ghost snares so repeats don’t sound machine-stamped.
- Pan toms across the field and keep kick/snare center for a natural drum image.
- Pull BIT down to ~12 and dial SR back for instant lo-fi hip-hop drums; add a touch of Master IR Mix for glue.
- Use paste midi to lift a chorus’s drum part out of your song and drill it as a one-bar loop.
- Keep Host BPM and Host Transport on so the sequencer stays locked to Homecrate with no manual sync.
- Lower-velocity ghost notes on SNARE 2 under your main snare add an R&B/hip-hop feel from one sample.