Beats Me0.1 Alpha

The Beats Me application was designed to be a MIDI based x0x-like drum machine that grew out of frustration with various other soft drum machines. It was inspired by The Korg ES-1, Fruity Loops, Rebirth and the Roland TR-707. This page is its manual and you can get a copy of the app or the source here as well. If you cannot use the mouse, e.g. if you're sight impaired like I am, most software drum machines aren't any good. Few, if any, let you map the step keys on the keyboard directly, input rhythms in real time and all in all control all aspects of pattern and song playback without using the rodent. Even fewer soft beat boxes respect your Windows fonts, colors and use the standard controls, here again Beats Me is quite different. The main goal of beats me is to be a fully keyboard usable and screen reader accessible MIDI drum machine with a minimalist feature set. Mouse usage is supported as an after thought, which is quite the contrary of most music software. I've added the features I use myself and am sharing this drum machine in the hopes of it being useful for other people, too. The source is also available under GPL like terms (ask me for the details), though the GUi bits are messy and Windows specific.