Guide

A Pattern is the main building block in pattrns. It lets you define when and what to play.

pattrns consumes Lua script files that define patterns as specified in the API documentation.

Components

• TimeBase defines the time unit of a pattern.
• Pulse → Gate → Event perform the basic event generation in 3 stages.
• Parameters allow changing behavior of components during runtime.

All content in patterns can be either static or dynamic:

• Static content is defined as a Lua table. There are various helpers included in the API, such as note scales, chords, and pulse table to ease creating static content.

• Dynamic content is generated on the fly by Lua functions while the pattern runs. Generators are functions with local state, which can e.g. be used to apply replicable randomization.

Cycle events use Tidal Cycles mini-notation to create patterns in a flexible, condensed form.

Examples

See Quickstart for a set of simple examples to start and to play around with.

The Examples section contains more advanced and guided examples.