Patterns

You make music with Tidal by creating patterns. Patterns are always declared using a specific name, d1 ... d9, p "dada", p 123123, followed by the content of the pattern. These patterns are connections to the SuperDirt synthesizer that you can use to play audio samples, synthesizers, and so on. The following example is using four different patterns, separated by a blank line:

-- a bass drum
d1 $ s "bd ~ bd ~"

-- high-hat pattern
d2 $ s "[~ hh]*2"

-- 1.. 1.. 1.. 1..
d3 $ s "numbers:1"

-- clap
d4 $ s "cp cp cp"

Classic pattern names

d1 to d16 are considered, historically, to be the classic pattern names. Each pattern will be associated to an orbit (a track for effects and audio output).

d1 ...
d2 ...
d3 ...
d4 ...
etc...

Patterns by number

As an alternative, you can type p (for pattern) followed by any number to get a new pattern :

p 1234 $ s "bd bd"

p 4321 $ s "hh hh"

Patterns by name

If you don't like numbers for some reason, you can also give "names" to your patterns:

p "romeo" $ s "bd bd"

p "juliet" $ s "hh*4"

Doing things once

Sometimes, you don't really want a pattern but something that will only play once. The once function does that:

once $ s "trump"

Stop patterns

There are some very convenient commands you can use to stop patterns.

Stop a single pattern

To stop a specific pattern, you can use the silence function:

p "loudpattern" $ silence

This function will stop your pattern next cycle.

Stop everything

The function hush will stop all the patterns currently running:

hush

Panic

Sometimes, things can go a little bit crazy. For instance, you can end up with numerous synthesizers stacking on the top of each other, leading a gradual loss of control. If you are panicking or if you are afraid, just enter panic:

panic

It will behave just like hush, but with a twist: it will also kill all the synthesizers/audio samples currently running on the SuperDirt side. You should be back to total silence in no time.