Gate
A gate decides whether and when to release an arriving signal. Five modes cover delay, arrival counting, within-bar patterns, song-section measures, and musical-boundary holds.
Gates are how rhythm changes happen without redrawing the timeline. Want a fill on bar 4? A gate. Want a kick that only hits on the downbeat? A gate. Want a synth line to drop out for two bars then return? A gate. The signal stream stays continuous; the gate decides what gets through.
delay: fixed offset
The simplest gate. Holds every arriving signal for a configurable number of beats, then releases it. Functionally equivalent to making every connected wire longer in beat-mode timing, but more concise when you have many wires converging on one downstream destination.
Use delay-mode gates as a centralized "shift everything downstream by N beats" operation. Useful for laying down a polyrhythmic offset against a parent meter without editing each wire individually.
everyNth: count and release
Counts arriving signals; releases on every Nth one. With N=4, the first three arriving signals are dropped, the fourth is released; the fifth through seventh dropped, the eighth released. Default N is 4, but any positive integer works.
Use everyNth gates for:
- Fills: N=4 with a measure-trigger Source releases a hit on bar 4 of a four-bar phrase.
- Drops: N=8 lets the gate stay closed for seven bars and pop on the eighth.
- Polymeter: two everyNth gates with different counts (3 and 4) produce voices that drift in and out of phase with each other across a 12-pulse cycle.
- Phrase boundaries: N=16 with a measure trigger fires once per 16-bar section; useful for sectional transitions.
- Sparse ornament: a high N (say 32) drops a rare ornamental hit at predictable intervals so it never overwhelms the texture.
Step Mask: patterned within a measure
A 16-character binary string. Each character represents one tick within the measure (with the platform default of TICK_SUBDIVISION = 4 and a 4/4 time signature, that's 16 sixteenth-note ticks per bar). 1 lets a signal through; 0 blocks it. The default 1010101010101010 is straight eighths.
| Parameter | Type | Range | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1010101010101010 | mask | Straight eighth notes: the default. Even subdivision, useful as a baseline rhythm. | ||
| 1000100010001000 | mask | Quarter notes only: on the beat, every beat. Great for kick patterns. | ||
| 0010001000100010 | mask | Off-beats only: the "and" of every beat. Reggae upstroke, ska, jazz hi-hat patterns. | ||
| 1000001000001000 | mask | Tresillo: the 3+3+2 eighth-note pattern. Common in son, bachata, and reggaeton. | ||
| 1010100010101000 | mask | Down-heavy with a syncopated tail: busy on the first half of each beat group, sparse on the second. | ||
| 1011010110110100 | mask | Dense polyrhythmic feel: odd accents that resolve only over two measures of context. | ||
| 1000000000000000 | mask | Once per measure: equivalent to a measure trigger gated at the downbeat. Use for sectional anchors. |
Song Measures: arrange by section
Choose whole measures from the current song structure. An arrival passes immediately when its arrival measure is enabled and is dropped when that measure is disabled; this mode never queues or holds. Choices follow stable section identities when sections are renamed or reordered, and repeat on each complete song cycle.
boundaryHold: snap to the grid
Holds an arriving signal until the next configured boundary, then releases it. Useful when an upstream Source or modifier is irregular but its downstream effects should land cleanly on the grid.
A signal arriving 23 ms before the next measure waits the full remaining 23 ms; a signal arriving 99% of the way through a chord waits the remaining 1% to land cleanly on the next chord. Loose triggers in, locked rhythm out.
Trigger source: what counts as a boundary
For boundaryHold, the gate watches a configurable trigger source that determines what counts as a "boundary":
| Parameter | Type | Range | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| measure | source | default | The next bar boundary. The most common choice. | |
| chord | source | The next chord change in the global progression. Snaps signals to harmonic transitions. | ||
| phrase | source | The next phrase boundary (configurable in music settings). For longer-form snapping. | ||
| sectionStart | source | The next song-structure section beginning (intro, verse, chorus, etc.). | ||
| sectionEnd | source | The next section end. Useful for fades or cadential punctuation. | ||
| sectionCycle | source | Once per full song-structure cycle: the longest-form boundary. | ||
| interval | source | Every N ticks regardless of bars. For polyrhythmic boundary holds. |
Worked use cases
Drum pattern from gate logic. Three branches off one percussion Source: kick every measure, snare on everyNth=4, hi-hat with a measureMask. Three branches, three Gates, one pattern that adapts when BPM changes.
Arrangement-level fill. An everyNth=8 Gate releases a fill Source once per eight measures, placing ornament at a structural moment without sequencing every hit.
Quantizing irregular triggers. When an upstream Source or modifier is irregular, route the final stage through a boundaryHold Gate triggered by measure or chord. Loose firings snap to musical boundaries.
Polyrhythm from one Source. Parallel everyNth Gates with counts 3 and 5 make a cycle that repeats every 15 measures. Add 7 and the cycle expands to 105 measures—practically geological in loop terms.
The technique article on building rhythm with gate logic instead of event placement. Continue learning