BreakBox
User manual

What it is

• Slices. A loop (such as an Amen break) is cut into equal slices, one per sixteenth by default.
• Shape. The slices sit around a shape, one slice per point. The shape picks the meter (4/4, 7/8, 9/8 and many more).
• Playhead. It normally steps to the next slice. With the jump map it can leap somewhere else, with a chance you set for every link.
• Loops A, B, C… Each slice can play from a different loop. Loops swap by odds you can edit.
• Phrase. Bars are grouped into a phrase (default 4 bars). The first bar is new, later bars repeat it, and some are variations. See Phrase and form.

Make sound in 60 seconds

1. Press the round RUN button (or Space).
2. Open the PRESET stepper at the top left of the LCD and step through the factory patches (Straight amen, Mash, Build, Drop, Breakdown, Glitch, Dub, Jungle roll, Tight One, Hard Mother).
3. Change the tempo by clicking the green BPM number in the display and dragging up or down (hold Shift for fine steps, mouse wheel for ±1, double-click to reset to 120). Everything stays in time.
4. Open the DRUMS tab in the right panel and click hard. A kick and snare pattern joins the break.
5. Open FX and click hardcore or dub.
6. Click squares in the beat grid to hear single slices.

Find your way around

Top bar, row 1: logo, the LCD (preset, meter, BPM, now playing, loops, phrase), the round RUN button, DETERMINISTIC with its length select, the VOL slider, undo and redo, the pink manual button (this page) and the light/dark switch.

Top bar, row 2: save, the A / B mixer (A and B buttons, patch menus, crossfader, SYNC, MIX ▾ for ready-made pairs, PANEL, FULL), FILL and the two chance sliders. Click the orange name at the top to pick a mix or any patch. Picking one loads it on A, B silent, fader in the middle.

Display (centre): the beat grid and shape. Its top-left buttons choose what to show; the top-right PANEL button hides the right panel.

Right panel: five tabs, SHAPE, JUMPS, LOOPS, DRUMS and FX.

Rest the pointer on almost anything for about a second and a half and a tooltip explains it. You can turn tooltips off in ⚙ Settings (they are on by default). The panels carry no printed instructions: all the explanation lives in those hover tips.

Squares, shape and timeline

Kick and snare flashes: every kick and snare in the DRUMS pattern sends a thin impulse line from the loop's playhead into the centre of the shape, lighting a kick disc (orange) and a snare ring (blue) there. The flashes follow the drum sequencer exactly, one per kick and snare step including ghost notes. Nothing flashes when the pattern is off or when the kick or snare is turned down or muted in the Mixer. The shape itself keeps the usual slice highlight and jump lines. Turn the flashes off in ⚙ Settings (top right of the display).

One of squares and shape is always on screen; you cannot hide both. Free shapes have no grid, so they always show the shape. Your choices are remembered.

Meters and shapes

The SHAPE tab lists the meters. Choosing one sets the number of slices per bar and draws the matching shape: lens (2/4), triangle, box (4/4), pentagon, house, pentagram, hexagon, heptagon / heptagram, octagon / octagram, 6/8 hexagram, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8, 12/8, and a folded section of mixed meters.

Free shapes (circle, figure 8, trefoil, clover, limaçon, star) and ✎ draw let you draw your own path. The slices spread along it.

Jumps (the Markov chain)

In the JUMPS tab you control where the playhead may go next. Every slice has a row of weights. Each weight is turned into a chance that, from that slice, the playhead goes to the other slice.

• Skip / chaos is how often the chain is used at all. At 0 the loop plays straight. Higher values jump more.
• Jump map models (the Jump map button opens a popup with the five connection models first, then N random and custom): how the links are laid out. Symmetrical follows the shape evenly (the original). Clustered: slices link to their near neighbours, and the closer the slice the stronger the link, so jumps stay in tight neighbourhoods. Hubs: every slice is pulled towards the beat downbeats, the first one strongest. Mirror: jumps land on the mirror image of where you are, like a palindrome. Fibonacci: growing leaps ahead (+2, +3, +5, +8, +13…) with a few leaps back, spiral-like. All four use the Density slider for how many links each slice gets. N random and custom are as before.
• Presets: auto, same step, beat ahead, anywhere, no jumps.
• Edit a link: click a line in the shape to open the link popup and change its chance. In connect mode, drag from one slice to another to make a link.
• Faint lines are possible jumps. Bright lines belong to the selected slice and show their chances.

Loops and odds

The LOOPS tab sets up to six loops (A–F). Pick which loop is in each slot. The built-in loops are 20 synthesized glitch loops (glitch 1–20: clicks, FM pings, hats, zaps, rings, ticks and rhythm patterns, all generated in the browser). The glitch loops are always kept clean, tight and thin. There are also 12 synth break loops (boom bap, two-step, four floor, half time, syncopated, rolling, skippy, hat heavy, tom fill, breakcore, lo-fi lazy, push): two-bar breakbeats played on a built-in synthesized drum kit with ghost notes, open hats and swing. They are all original and generated in the browser. Five FM loops (fm steel, fm burnt bd, fm bleeps, fm clappa, fm bass burna) are built the same way as the FM Steps voice bank in Phrase Step: two-operator FM with off-integer ratios and a hot modulation index that falls fast, then drive and lo-fi. To use your own breaks, load your own audio files (they stay on your computer).

• Loop swap quant decides when swaps happen (on a jump, beat or bar).
• Contrast and Hop shape how different the next loop is and how often it changes.
• Odds grid: a table of chances of going from loop X to loop Y.
• Bar lane: pin a loop to a given bar of the phrase.
• Slices: how many pieces the loop is cut into.

Phrase and form

In the JUMPS tab, Phrase sets how many bars make one phrase (off, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12 or 16). Form sets the shape of that phrase: which bars are fresh and which are copies.

• A letter is a bar. The first time a letter appears, the bar is new: the playhead makes fresh choices and BreakBox remembers them.
• A repeated letter replays that memory. How exactly it copies is set by Repeat (100% = identical, lower = it mutates).
• ′ (prime) is a variation: it starts from the memory but mutates much more. It is usually the fill at the end.
• Picking a form sets Phrase to the same number of bars. If Phrase is longer than the form, the form tiles.

Built-in forms

Design your own

1. Open the Form menu and choose ✎ design your own….
2. Pick the number of Bars (2–16). One box appears per bar.
3. Click a box's letter to step through A to H. Shift-click steps backwards. The same letter means the same bar.
4. Click the ′ next to a letter to make that bar a variation.
5. Type a name and press save. Your forms appear under My forms in the menu (saved in this browser). delete removes the current one.

The coloured phrase bar at the top of the display shows where you are: orange = new, green = repeat, red = variation.

Slice pads

The row of pads under the display has one pad per slice. The letter on a pad shows which loop plays that slice. Click = pin the slice to the brush loop. Click again = free it. Shift-click = next loop. Choose the brush loop by clicking a loop name under Two loops. Hover the pads for this reminder.

Envelope

The FX tab starts with a global amplitude envelope that shapes every slice: Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release, with presets full, snappy, tight and blip. Short decays and zero sustain turn a break into staccato blips.

Mixer

The MIXER tab has one strip for each loop in use (A, B, C…) plus a KICK strip and a SNR strip.

• Fader: level, from 0 to 125% (100% is unity). Double-click to reset.
• Pan: left / right. Double-click to centre.
• M mutes the strip. S solos it: every strip that is not soloed goes quiet.
• The meter beside each fader shows the level while playing.
• A loop strip follows the loop slot, so if you change which loop sits in slot B, the B strip now controls the new loop.
• Levels are saved with patches, and undo covers them. The FX stack and the master VOL come after the mixer.

Drums

The DRUMS tab adds a synthesized FM kick and snare under the break.

• Pattern grid: 16 steps. Click cycles off, hit and ghost. Drag a step up or down to set its chance. Double-click removes it.
• Pattern library: the Pattern button opens a menu that starts as a short list of the nine categories. Click a category (the little arrow) to open its patterns, click a pattern to use it. It holds 100+ kick and snare patterns in nine categories: Breakbeats, Boom bap / hip-hop, Jungle / drum & bass, Breakcore / hardcore, House / techno / garage, Dub / reggae / half-time, Funk / soul / shuffle, Footwork / trap / drill, and Glitch / IDM / poly. ◀ ▶ step through the whole list, random picks any, and custom is your own pattern. The per-bar drum phrase menus use the same categories.
• Presets: hard and boom also switch the FX Drive on, mixed in so the kick and snare bite. off clears the drums.
• Kick and snare sounds: ◀ ▶, random, sounds… and a row of quick-click chips. One click loads and plays the sound. The sliders (Tune, Punch, FM ratio, Decay, Click, Snr tone, Snr decay) tweak it.
• Whole kit: quick chips for complete kits (808 sub, tight punch, 909 stab, lo-fi thump, jungle chunk, gabber, hardcore stomp, dub thud, crushed break). kits… saves and opens your own.
• Drum bus: Thick (saturation), Duck (breaks get quieter when the kick hits), LP and HP filters.
• Chances: separate kick, snare and ghost chances.
• Drum phrase: a different pattern for each bar of up to 8 bars, with step-back / step-ahead.

FX stack

Everything (breaks and drums) runs through this chain, in order: Filter → Drive → Crush → Ring mod → Chorus → Flanger → Delay → Reverb → Gate chop → Glue → limiter. Click a module's round light to switch it on, click its name to open it.

Presets: clean, dub, lo-fi, wash, hardcore, rave, robot, sweep, gater, tape.

FX step lock

Just above the FX stack is a step sequencer for one-step FX bursts. Each locked step fires its FX on that step, with its own chance.

1. Choose a brush (an FX name).
2. Click a step to lock that FX there. Click more brushes on the same step to stack them. Click the same brush again to remove it.
3. Drag a step up or down to set its chance (5–100%). Each stacked FX rolls the dice separately.
4. Set Steps to any length from 1 to 64 (for example 9 or 13). One step per slice, wrapping at the length. The playing step is outlined green and flashes gold when an FX fires.

random fills the steps with random FX and chances. clear empties them. ON turns the whole sequence off without losing it.

Saving and undo

• Save button (the disk icon at the left of row 2, or ⌘S / Ctrl+S): saves over the patch you opened. If what you have is a factory item or something new, it opens the save box and asks for a name.
• ★ star: appears on the save button (and after the name in the PRESET display) when the setup has changed since you loaded or saved it. Saving clears it.
• Patches: the save box keeps the current sound setup under a name. Your patches join the orange name menu and the A / B menus after the factory ones. Saving with an existing name overwrites it.
• Autosave: the whole project is saved in this browser every few seconds and restored when you return.
• Undo / redo: the round arrows, ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z (or Ctrl-Y). Almost every change is undoable, up to 100 steps.
• DETERMINISTIC (H): replays the last bar or phrase exactly instead of rolling new dice. Choose the length with the select beside it.
• Saved kits, kicks, snares and forms live in this browser's storage.

FILL button

The red FILL button (row 2, right side, or the F key) turns the bar into a fill while you hold it. Let go and playback returns to normal.

• More going on: slices split into repeated hits. 1.25× (the default and the minimum) splits about a quarter of the slices in two, 2× doubles every slice, 4× plays four hits per slice. A few extra snares come in too.
• Classic FX: about every other slice during the fill gets one of the classic breakbeat effects: stutter, roll, reverse, tape stop, double speed, gate chop, filter sweep, crush or reverb throw. The default, Any, picks a random one each time.

The ⚙ next to the button holds just three options: Button (hold, or tap on / tap off), FX (Any, or one fixed effect) and Density. They are saved with the patch.

A / B patches and the crossfader

The page now holds two complete BreakBox decks, A and B, running on one shared clock. The mixer sits in the top bar, in the second row.

• A and B buttons: press one (or hit Z for A, X for B) and only that deck plays. The fader sits in the middle.
• Touch the crossfader: both decks play. Slide towards A or B to fade into that side. The centre (white line) has both at full; each side fades the far deck out. Double-click the fader to return it to the middle. The glow under each button shows how loud that deck is.
• Level meters: a stereo LED meter beside each button shows what you actually hear from that side (after the fader), with a peak hold.
• Drums while blending (⚙ Settings → Drums while blending): Morph (default): the kick and snare patterns of A and B blend step by step into one hybrid pattern. Fade: a normal mixer fade, each deck keeps its own drums. Follow: the louder side owns the drums, switching at the centre. A beat / B beat: only that deck's kick and snare play, at full level, even when the fader is all the way on the other side. Bass swap: the fading deck's kick loses its low end. Duck: the fading side's drums drop faster than its loops. Hover each name for a short tip. (In Morph, Follow, A beat and B beat the drums skip the deck's FX and its fader, so they stay full and dry.)
• Visuals while blending: when you touch the crossfader, the main display shows both decks side by side, A on the left and B on the right. Use the small square / pentagon icons at the top left of either half to switch both halves between squares and shape (it follows the view you had before blending). Click a half to work on that deck. Click A or B (or press Z / X) to go back to one deck. To turn the side-by-side off, untick Show A and B together while blending in ⚙ Settings.
• FULL (in the mixer): the display takes over the whole screen and the top bar hides. While blending it shows A and B side by side across the screen. In full screen with one deck the right-hand panel stays as you set it. A faint PANEL button (shows or hides the tabs) and an EXIT FULL button sit in the bottom-right corner, and Esc also leaves. The PANEL button in the mixer is lit while the tabs are showing.
• While blending, click a deck's half of the display to work on that deck: it becomes the main window (its header and panel), without changing what you hear.
• Patch pickers: under each of the A and B buttons is a menu that loads any patch into just that side: your own patches and the factory patches. The menu shows the name of what is loaded now.
• MIX ▾ (in the mixer) opens a list of ready-made pairs and loads one into both A and B (A on, B silent, fader in the middle): (Jungle ⇄ Glitch, Boom bap ⇄ Breakcore, Hard Mother ⇄ Tight One, Cluster ⇄ Mirror Lake, Hubs ⇄ Spiral, Breakcore ⇄ Thin Hubs) with different material in A and B. The last three are built from the new patches below.
• SYNC (tempo lock): A and B always run the same BPM. Drag the BPM number on either deck, or load a patch into either side, and the other deck follows. When the lock first turns on, B takes A's tempo. Turn SYNC off to let them run at different tempos; turning it back on makes B match A again.
• Play and stop start and stop both decks together so bars stay lined up. Each deck has its own save, autosave and FX, but the display (timeline, pads, side panel, squares / shape view and light or dark) is always the same on both. The keyboard goes to the deck you are looking at.

Step mode (arrow keys)

Press → while playing and the music stops on the current slice. From then on the arrow keys play slices one at a time, always in time with the beat grid (one slice per sixteenth), so taps never fall off the beat.

• → tap = the next slice, on the next grid tick. Several quick taps queue up and play on consecutive ticks.
• ← tap = the previous slice.
• ↓ / ↑ = jump down / up one row of the beat grid, to the same column (it wraps from the last row to the first). Rows are the beats shown in the squares view, so this moves by a whole beat.
• Hold any arrow to keep stepping that way at the grid speed. Let go and it stops again.
• Space or the play button resumes normal playback from where you are. An amber STEP MODE badge shows while you are stepping.
• Drums and FX step lock are silent in step mode. Stepping plays whatever loop each slice is set to.
• Turn it off in ⚙ Settings (top right of the display). It is on by default.

Keyboard

Tips

• Start with Skip low and raise it until the break starts to surprise you.
• Use phrase forms like A A A B for a stable groove with a new bar at the end, or A B C D for constant change.
• Lower Repeat to make repeated bars drift.
• Put a chop or stutter on step 16 at 50% for a fill that happens about every other bar.
• Gabber or hardcore stomp kit plus the hardcore FX preset gives a hard sound quickly.
• Turn the reverb Low cut up if the mix gets muddy.

Trouble

• No sound: press RUN once, check VOL and that at least one loop loaded.
• Things feel too random: lower Skip, raise Repeat, or press DETERMINISTIC.
• Shortcuts do nothing: click empty space on the page; keys are ignored while typing in a text field.
• Start over: choose the Straight amen patch.