Using Kiwipulse in your DAW

Kiwipulse designs drum sounds. Your DAW plays them. That split is the whole idea: you build a kit on the Bench, drop the plugin on a track, and the host drives it like any other instrument — its sequencer, its automation, its arrangement. There is no beat to export and nothing to keep in sync by hand.

This page is how the two meet: what notes trigger what, how a hit varies from strike to strike, and why there is no arranger inside the plugin.

How the host plays the kit

Kiwipulse answers MIDI on two fixed note zones. Everything else is ignored — the host owns arrangement, so there is no pattern-launch or scene zone to learn.

Drum pads — `C4`…`G4` (MIDI 60–67)

Eight notes, one per track, low to high: C4 fires track 1, C#4 track 2, up to G4 for track 8. Each note-on strikes that track's voice once, at the sound's own pitch, and the note velocity carries through — to loudness always, and to timbre wherever you have routed it (see velocity → timbre). Note-offs are ignored: a drum rings out on its own envelope, so a pad is a trigger, not a held key.

Pads land on the exact sample the host sends them on, not on the nearest buffer edge, so a tightly programmed lane stays tight at any buffer size.

Lay your beat on the plugin's MIDI track the way you'd program any drum rack — one lane of pads, velocities to taste. That lane **is** your pattern, and it lives in the host where you can see it against everything else.

Macros — `C1`…`D#1` (MIDI 24–27)

The kit's four performance macros each have a note. A note-on sets that macro to the note's velocity and latches it there until the next note-on toggles it back — so a macro is a sound-state you flip mid-song from the same MIDI lane. Each macro is also a host automation parameter, so you can draw or record it as a continuous curve instead.

The three ways a hit varies

"How a drum changes from hit to hit" is the one thing no DAW can reach into an instrument and do — so Kiwipulse exposes it three ways, from automatic to fully authored:

Velocity → timbre needs no setup beyond routing: on the Bench's velocity strip you draw how a param answers to how hard the hit lands, so your DAW's velocities do the rest. This is the tier that travels into host-driven playback for free.

Macros are how a deliberate sound-change becomes something the host plays. Point a macro at the params you want to move, and the host can flip it per section or ride it into a drop.

P-locks and breathe are design-time: they live on the internal audition groove (below), so you hear a locked or breathing hit while you sculpt. They're the sketchpad's fine brush — with one exception: a whole-track breathe (shift-drag with no hit selected) is part of the sound, so the host plays it like anything else. To make a per-hit lock or breathe something your DAW plays, turn it into a variant track:

A variant hit is the honest, host-played form of "this one hit is different." Duplicate a track (its right-click menu → Duplicate track), tweak the copy, and play its note where you want the change: T1 T1 T2 T1. The pair is choke-grouped so they behave as one drum. It costs a track slot, but unlike a p-lock it plays anywhere the host sends that note. See Per-hit sound design.

The audition groove

The plugin carries a small 16-step groove of its own. It is not your song — it is the loop you tap out so you can hear the kit while you design it. It follows the host transport and tempo: hit play in your DAW and the groove plays in time; change the BPM and it follows, gliding to the new tempo rather than restarting the bar. In the standalone app the same groove is your sketchpad, driven by the transport's own Play button.

The host's tempo reaches the sounds too, not only the steps: any envelope you set to a musical division (1/8, 1/16) resolves against the tempo of the song, so a synced decay stays the same musical length when you change the BPM — and a kit written at one tempo behaves correctly in a project at another.

You program and shape that groove on the Bench — placing hits, nudging their timing, fanning retrig rolls, and sculpting per-hit sound with p-locks and breathe. It is covered under Auditioning your kit and Per-hit sound design.

The groove is deliberately one bar and deliberately simple. Anything more — variation over time, fills that only land in the chorus, the actual arrangement — is your DAW's job, and it already does it better than a box inside a plugin could.

No arranger, on purpose

There is no song timeline, no scene launcher, and no arrange page inside Kiwipulse. Your clip or track in the host is the arrangement. That is not a missing feature — it is the same bet the whole product is built on: the host wins at arrangement, mixing and sequencing, so every hour not spent rebuilding those is an hour spent on the sound. See Arrangement.

See also

• Performance macros — authoring the sound-moves the host triggers.
• The velocity strip — routing velocity → timbre.
• Auditioning your kit — the internal groove.
• Arrangement — why the host owns it, and saving projects.