Fill

Fill is an eight-channel drum machine that plays itself. Where Beat is one voice you program, Fill is a whole kit with 343 built-in pattern sets that plays a groove and drops its own fills. Fill is 32 HP and needs an external clock.

The groove is driven by pressure. One internal value builds a little every bar and vents as a fill. It drives two things: the intensity tier (sparse, main, or lift) and a seeded variation layer on top of the pattern. Turn ACCUM up and pressure builds faster. Turn DISCHARGE up and each fill spends more of what it has built.

Playback is clock-driven. Steps fire on CLOCK edges and the bar length is measured between BARs, so Fill freezes the moment the clock stops rather than running away from the rest of the patch.

How often it fills

PHRASE is the fill frequency. It sets the phrase length in bars (4, 8, or 16), and a fill lands at the end of each phrase, so PHRASE at 8 gives a fill every eight bars. The intensity tier is latched per phrase, so a whole phrase sits on one tier while pressure builds underneath instead of flickering bar to bar.

Whether fills keep to that grid is a context-menu option (Fills). Synced, the default, drops the fill right on the phrase boundary. Free runs it as a chance each bar, so a break lands when it lands.

Patterns

Fill ships with 343 pattern sets across three banks: a canonical set, a General MIDI set, and a disco bank. A five-tab browser (PATTERN, GENRE, REGION, USER, FAVS) finds them, favourites persist across patches, and a pattern queue lets you line up an arrangement by hand.

You can add your own from SignalFunctionSet/patterns/ in your Rack user folder, and .txt exports from drum-patterns.com import natively. EXTRAS is a hard cap on engine-added notes per bar, so the generator can decorate a pattern but never turn it into a different one.

The kit

Eight channels: Kick, Snare, Closed hat, Open hat, Low perc, High perc, Clap/rim, Bell. Each has its own off-beat swing.

Inputs and outputs

• Controls: Accumulate, Discharge, Tier offset, Phrase (fill frequency: 4 / 8 / 16 bars), Extras, Set, Reset, Next, Reseed, and per-channel swing.
• Inputs: Clock (required), Bar, Reset, Next, Reseed, plus CV for Phrase (fill frequency), Accum, Discharge, Tier, Set, and Extras.
• Outputs: per channel a gate, velocity, and accent (8 x 3); plus a Fill gate (high during a fill), Set, Num, Den, and BPM.

Patch idea

Give it room to breathe. Clock and Bar from Meter, PHRASE at 8 bars so a fill lands every eight, ACCUM low and DISCHARGE high. Fill holds a steady groove and lets go with a big fill each phrase. Patch NUM, DEN, and BPM back into Meter so an odd-meter set at its own tempo carries the rest of the patch with it.