short-header

Boom-tsk

Boom-tsk is a fixed performance mode on the TR-8 sequencer that drops the sequencer down to a minimal kick + closed-hat backbone at the press of a single button. It is non-editable: the pattern, sounds, and step positions are fixed. It is intended as a “reset to a steady pulse” gesture during live performance: useful when an arrangement has drifted into busy territory and you want to come back to a clean four-on-the-floor with hats on the off-beats before building back up.

What “boom-tsk” means

Sound Source Where it plays MIDI note
Boom (kick) TR-8 BD Bottom row of the main TR-8 view 36
Tsk (closed hat) TR-8 CH Bottom row of the alt TR-8 view 42

The pattern is a fixed steady pulse:

Boom-tsk hits always play at the same fixed velocity, ignore Euclidean overlays, do not advance velocity arps and fire no CC arps. The row therefore plays exactly the same way every time, whatever you have set up on it elsewhere.

Neither row responds to the regular trig grid, accents, Euclidean overlay, mod-chance, sustain, velocity arp, or CC arp: the pattern, notes, and velocity are hard-wired. There is no editable per-step content for boom-tsk; it is on or off.

Where it applies

Boom-tsk lives exclusively on the TR-8 sequencer (sequencer 13). Both:

are affected together. When boom-tsk is active, every other row of the kit is muted on both views; only those two bottom rows stay unmuted.

It does not apply to:

If you want a similar “kick + hats” reduction on a non-TR-8 sequencer, build it manually using trig view + step accents + Euclidean overlay (see Recipes for evolving the pattern below).

Activation

Boom-tsk is toggled from the TR-8 main view (sequencer 13), bottom Launchpad row (row 1), in the mute column.

Gesture Effect
Bottom row mute press (no modifier) Toggle boom-tsk on/off

What happens on activation

  1. Every row of the kit goes muted, on both the main and the alt view.
  2. The two bottom rows, boom on the main view and tsk on the alt, come back unmuted. They are the only two rows left playing.
  3. The boom row is overwritten with a kick on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13; the tsk row with a hat on steps 3, 7, 11 and 15.
  4. Both rows have their note assignments overwritten too, to the TR-8’s kick and closed hat.
  5. channel_mutes[12] (sequencer 13) is force-unmuted so the sequencer can sound even if it was sequencer-muted before activation. The old standalone .pd voices ignored sequencer mute, so without this the feature would silently produce no sound whenever sequencer 13 happened to be sequencer-muted.
  6. Boom and tsk start firing at their fixed velocity, with no Euclidean, velocity-arp or CC-arp influence.
  7. All other TR-8 rows go silent. Both on the main and alt views.

The other rows are muted outright rather than cued, so nothing creeps back in at the next bar boundary while boom-tsk is running.

What happens on deactivation

  1. The two control rows go back to muted.
  2. Both rows’ patterns are cleared, every step off.
  3. Both rows’ note assignments go back to their defaults: silence on the main view, and the alt view’s original drum-kit assignment.
  4. Boom and tsk go silent.
  5. All other rows stay muted. There is no snapshot/restore of the pre-activation state.
  6. channel_mutes[12] is left UNMUTED. With every row muted the sequencer produces silence regardless, and not restoring the prior sequencer-mute state keeps the implementation free of module-level snapshot state.

This is deliberate: deactivating boom-tsk leaves you on a silent TR-8, so you can rebuild the kit row by row using normal mute/unmute gestures rather than getting hit with whatever was playing before.

A typical boom-tsk performance arc:

  1. Build complexity on the TR-8 with trig view, accents, Euclidean overlay, mod-chance, etc.
  2. Hit boom-tsk to drop the kit back to kick + hats. The arrangement now has space again.
  3. Bring rows back one at a time. Press boom-tsk to deactivate (everything goes silent), then unmute the rows you want using top-row mute on each one.
  4. Or: layer synth content on top while boom-tsk is holding the floor, and pop boom-tsk off when the synths arrive at a transition.

Boom-tsk is also handy as a risk-free toggle during sound checks. You always know what comes out, regardless of whatever pattern state is loaded.

Recipes for evolving the pattern

Boom-tsk itself is fixed, but you can decorate around it on the same TR-8 by selectively unmuting other rows after activation. None of these change boom-tsk’s pattern; they layer content on top.

Goal Add this on top
Off-beat clap / snare backbeat Unmute the snare row, leave its TRIG content as-is
Slowly-evolving fills Add a Euclidean trig overlay on a tom row at low density
Build-up trigs Cue a 16-bar autodrop on the boom-tsk sequencer to drop the floor at a known boundary
Probabilistic ghosts Use mod-chance trig states (see Trigs) on a hat row

For a true “build” that doesn’t touch boom-tsk itself, prefer adding rows on other sequencers (synths) and let boom-tsk hold its line.

Cross-references