The Kboom tool is a drum pattern editor that has taken on a life of its own - it has a lot of features that are a lot of fun to play with. It displays a grid where each row represents a drum and each column represents a step. The drums, however, are not restricted to single notes that trigger drum sounds. A "drum" can be set to an arbitrary MIDI message, or even a complete phrase. New drums can be added and set on the fly, while the pattern is playing.

The menu button at the left end of each row will reveal a list of drums. The default drum list is appropriate for a General MIDI synthesizer, but if you want you can change this list by editing the lib/maps.k file as appropriate for your situation.

To use an arbitrary MIDI note as a drum, just play the note on your MIDI input device, and then invoke the "Use Rec'd Note/Chord" item in the menu button for one of the rows. From then on, cells in that row will trigger the note that you just played. The same method can be used to set the drum to a complete chord rather than a note. In essence, all notes that overlap the last-played note will be grabbed and used as the drum. If you want to use a phrase (i.e. several notes in sequence), just play the phrase on your MIDI input device and then invoke "Use Rec'd Phrase" in the drum's menu button. This will look backwards in time for the first two-beat space - everything played after that space will be taken as the "phrase" that will be used for that drum. Another way to set a drum note is to invoke "Use Snarf," in which case the current contents of the Snarf buffer will be used.

When you set a drum value using MIDI input or via the Snarf buffer, the label on the drum button will show a "constant phrase" representation of the value. To change this label, invoke the "Set Label" item in the drum button menu. You will be prompted to enter the text for a new label.

The More menu in the Kboom tool controls a variety of things. The Snarf item will grab a copy of the current drum pattern and put it into the Snarf buffer (for use in other tools). The Clear item will clear all of the cells in the drum grid. The "Read Drumkit" menu item will read a file that initializes the drum set. An example of the file that "Read Drumkit" uses can be found in the lib\*(Esdrums.kbm file - it is an ASCII file that specifies the channel, pitches, and labels for the drums. You can use a text editor to create other such files, making it easy to use a particular set of drums without having to set them up manually with the drum buttons.

The Flash item lets you turn off the flashing indication of the current beat at the top of the Kboom tool. Turning it off may be appropriate if you have a slow machine, or if there is just too much activity on your screen.

Instead of having each step be just on and off, you can use "More->Toggle Mode->Gradual" to turn on a mode in which each cell can be filled in gradually. If a cell is filled in 250f the way, then that "hit" of the drum will only occur 25% (randomly) of the time. This can add variety to a pattern. Another way of adding variety is to create a second Kboom tool with a different number of steps, and playing the two patterns at the same time.

The "# of Drums ->" and "# of Steps ->" items in the More menu let you change the number of rows and columns in the grid. The "Shift ->" item lets you shift the entire contents of the grid, forward and backward. The shift is done in a circular fashion, so no drum hits are actually lost.