One bar of loaded dice
Phaseburn One’s sequencer does not play back a pattern you drew. It rolls dice you have weighted, and performs a fresh take every bar. This page builds one bass line from straight sixteenths into a living groove, one decision at a time — and every note it rolls also leaves the plug-in as MIDI, so the same dice can play any instrument you own.
Start with a line you already know
Sixteen sixteenth-note slots at full chance is an ordinary step sequencer: the same bar, forever.
On the Beats tab the grid reads BEAT PROBABILITY down its left edge, and every slot holds a chance from 0 to 127. Fill the sixteenth row and you have the bass line every step sequencer plays — tight, correct, and identical on every pass.
Nothing is wrong with it. It is just finished.
Put dice on beat one
Three slots want the same moment. One weighted draw decides, and the winner rings for its whole length.
A moment’s budget is 127 points. Give the sixteenth on beat one 102 of them (80%), the quarter note 13 (10%) and the eighth 6 (5%), and the six points left over are a rest. Every bar, one draw picks a winner; it plays its full length and quiets every slot it overlaps.
Most bars open the way you drew them. Some hold the downbeat for a whole beat. One in twenty, the bar opens with a breath. That is not randomness bolted onto a pattern — it is the pattern.
Draw the spine
A second map ranks every position in the bar. The rest of the instrument reads it.
Switch to the Strength tab and the grid reads BEAT STRENGTH. Paint beat one strongest, beat three next, two and four behind them, the offbeats faint. Fifteen STYLE templates start you off.
Six systems read the map: which note the pool picks, whether the octave jumps, where the length, position and velocity modifiers work, and a NOTE STRENGTH route that pushes one chosen parameter harder on the beats that matter. Loudness comes last, and only as far as the VELOCITY slider hands the map over.
Tell each note where it is welcome
Every note in the pool carries a chance, a strength preference and a length preference.
The root is always there. Add the fifth and let it prefer strong beats. Add the root an octave down, prefer strong beats and long notes, and the bar’s held moments drop low the way a bass player’s would. Add the ninth at a quarter of the chance, prefer weak beats and short notes, and it mostly slips in between — a tenth as likely on a downbeat, a tenth as likely to ring long.
A note that prefers strong beats is boosted up to double on accents and cut to a tenth on ghosts: favored, never forced. Seventeen scales keep every choice inside the key.
Hang a fill off the last beat
A beat link forces its target whenever the source wins its draw. A target at zero exists only as a consequence.
Give the thirteenth sixteenth a 40% chance, zero the three after it, and chain them: 13 to 14, 14 to 15, 15 to 16. When beat 13 wins, the whole run plays; when it loses, none of it does. The fill arrives whole in some bars and never in pieces.
Links chain as far as you like — restraint is what keeps them groove-shaped — and pushing Length past full with Legato open turns the same chain into a slide.
Let the weak notes breathe
Humanize by length, not by smearing the beats that matter.
Shifting strong notes off the grid is how a machine imitates a player. A player does something else: the downbeat lands, and the notes in between vary in how long they hold. Aim a LENGTH modifier at Weak with a 40% probability and the ghosts clip short by up to the amount you set, differently every bar, while the accents stay put.
Then a touch of swing; then, if you still want it, a POSITION modifier for the weak notes only. Shifts happen after every decision is made, so they never change which slot won or which strength cell a note read.
Play it from the keys
Three ways in, chosen in the keyboard strip under every page.
KEY TRIGGER is the default: hold a key and the phrase starts from step 1, transposed so your note is the root; lift it and it stops. Change key legato and it re-roots without restarting.
CHORD FOLLOW turns whatever you hold into the pool: each key a candidate, how hard you struck it that note’s chance — an arpeggio with a memory for your voicing rather than a pattern of its own. Switch Velocity Lock off first; it ships on.
FREE RUN hands the transport to your DAW and locks the bar to its bar lines.
Send it somewhere else
Every note it rolls leaves the plug-in as MIDI, with the velocity the generator gave it.
Pull Phaseburn One’s own output down and it is a groove generator for anything on another track: your sampler, your drum machine, the synth you already love. VST3, CLAP and AU all send it.
It sends one note at a time and only what the sequencer plays — your own playing is not echoed through — and the standalone app, having no host to send to, carries clock and transport only. Host support for plug-in MIDI output varies, so check your host’s routing.
Let GENERATE write the first draft
Sixteen groove families, rules you can read, no AI.
One press writes a working bar: anchors that always play, varied parts that change figure, fills that burst at the end — all from deterministic music-theory rules. No model, no training data, nothing learned from anyone else’s music. VARY mutates it without touching what works, and a ten-deep Undo walks it back.
Then everything above still applies: the dice, the Strength map, the pool, the links. GENERATE is the first draft. The groove is yours.
Read the chapters
Every claim on this page traces to the manual — the same manual that ships inside the plugin.
Play it before it costs anything
Free and open — no card required. It’s free to use until October 15, 2026, then keeps working as a demo until you register a perpetual, DRM-free license (any time); ten beta users we pick get the full license free, and submitted presets can ship in the factory bank, credited to their authors.
Free €149 one-time at launch
Perks and preset picks are at our discretion — the beta comes with no guarantees