The first drum machine that listens.

SpaceDrum is the first drum machine that listens.

Combining generative beat-making with real-time audio reactivity, it's a rhythmic revelation — an endless idea machine, an inspiring rhythm instrument, and the ultimate jam companion. It isn't a preset player, and it isn't a step sequencer. You give it a groove and it composes around you: building the arrangement, throwing in fills like a real drummer, and reacting in real time to whatever else is playing in the room. The closest thing to a bandmate that fits on your desk.

Under the hood, eight sample-based drum voices are driven by a generative rhythm engine that decides what each drum plays from a few musical controls — while you shape how it all sounds with hands-on knobs. Nothing is buried in menus: every knob is a performance control, meant to be turned mid-groove.

What makes it different

• It composes structure, not just loops. PartMaker turns one groove into a full arrangement — verses, choruses, breakdowns — and you decide how much each drum changes between them.
• It plays fills like a drummer. FillMaker breaks the loop with expressive fills; you set how often and how wild.
• It listens to your other gear. Plug a synth, guitar, or turntable into SpaceDrum's inputs and its Reactivity locks the rhythmic decisions to what you're playing.
• It's built to last a lifetime. Individually handmade in Chicago, serial-numbered, and repaired by the people who designed it.

SpaceDrum has two working surfaces: the top control panel you play, and the rear/side jacks you connect. Internally, a compact computer runs the sound engine and a dedicated panel processor reads your every move and lights the panel back.

The top panel — at a glance

• A 4×4 grid of 16 lit pads — for selecting drums, choosing options, and showing the beat as it plays.
• Four banks of eight knobs/faders — the performance controls (per-drum Volume, Pattern, and Intensity, plus eight global controls). Each has a second function you reach by holding Shift.
• Transport and section buttons — Play/Stop, Shift, Reactivity, and the Parts and Fills controls, each with its own status light.
• A round display that shows status at rest and jumps to whatever parameter you're turning.

The rear/side jacks (see §13 for full detail)

• Audio outputs — 1/4" outputs to your speakers, mixer, or audio interface.
• Audio inputs — 1/4" inputs to feed SpaceDrum the sound it reacts to.
• MIDI DIN In and Out — 5-pin jacks for clock and note sync with other gear.
• USB — one cable to your computer for the COMMAND app, multichannel recording, and MIDI.
• Power — the barrel jack for the included power supply.

You'll have sound in under a minute.

1. Connect audio. Run a cable from a SpaceDrum 1/4" output to a powered speaker, mixer, or interface. (Start with the first output; add more later for individual drums.)
2. Power on. Plug in the included power supply and flip the power switch. The panel lights run a brief startup animation — a terracotta sweep around the grid — while the instrument wakes up. When it settles, you're ready. (If that animation never stops, see Troubleshooting.)
3. Press Play. Hit the Transport button. SpaceDrum starts generating a beat — the grid pads light in time as each drum hits.
4. Turn some knobs. Nudge a few Intensity knobs to make drums busier or sparser, bring up Tempo, add a little Swing. The display shows what you're changing.
5. Add motion. Tap Fills On to let it break the loop with fills; tap Parts On to let the arrangement evolve. Tap Play again to stop.

That's the whole loop: seed a groove, then shape it while it plays. The rest of this manual is about doing that with intent.

Every knob sends a live value to the sound engine; every button is an action. Hold Shift to reach a control's second (Shift) function. The panel is organized as four banks of eight knobs plus the transport/section buttons.

4.1 The four knob banks

Three banks are per-drum — one knob per voice, in the fixed order kick · snare · rim · tom · perc · hat 1 · hat 2 · crash — and one bank is global.

4.2 The global bank (eight knobs)

4.3 The buttons

4.4 The grid (16 pads)

The 4×4 grid of lit pads does triple duty:

• Shows the beat — pads light in time as drums hit (color and brightness encode which drum and how hard).
• Selects — pick which drum a global knob focuses on, choose banks/options.
• Sets options via Shift — e.g. Shift + pads picks time signature (3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 7/4). On current units, Shift also turns the Hat 2 and Crash pads into PlayMaker's RECORD and CONTROL (§8).

4.5 The lights

SpaceDrum's lighting is live feedback from the engine, not decoration:

• The 16 grid pads (full-color) show sequencer activity — each hit flashes its drum's color, held bright enough to always catch fast notes.
• Per-drum level lights show how hard each of the eight voices is playing.
• Button status lights show what's engaged (Play running, Parts/Fills latched — a blinking light means "latched/held"); the Parts/Fills On button also lights while you hold it to capture a per-part change.
• The startup sweep (terracotta comet + gently breathing buttons) plays until the engine is ready; it's also a health cue — if it keeps looping, the panel is powered but not yet talking to the brain.

This is the magic at the heart of the instrument. SpaceDrum doesn't store patterns you program step by step. Instead, a generative engine decides what each drum plays, in real time, from a handful of musical controls. Think of it as a drummer with an enormous rhythmic vocabulary: you don't write the part, you direct it.

• Each of the eight voices has its own generator, so the kick, snare, hats and the rest each make their own decisions while staying locked to the same clock.
• Style sets the overall rhythmic character; Pattern picks the variation within it; Intensity (per drum) decides how busy or sparse that voice is; Flair adds controlled unpredictability so it never loops robotically.
• Turn a control and the part changes as you listen — this is the heart of playing SpaceDrum.

Transport. Press Play to start, again to stop. On power-up the engine is ready but silent until you press Play. Shift + Play resets cleanly to the top of a bar — handy for locking to other gear. When SpaceDrum starts or stops, it also sends MIDI Start/Stop to your DIN and USB gear so the rest of your rig follows (see §13).

Time signature. Hold Shift and use the grid to choose 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, or 7/4.

SpaceDrum has eight sample-based voices, always in this order across the per-drum knobs:

Kick · Snare · Rim · Tom · Perc · Hat 1 · Hat 2 · Crash

Each voice plays a sound sample and has generous polyphony, so fast rolls and long tails never cut themselves off unnaturally. One musical detail worth knowing: Hat 1 chokes Hat 2 — an open hat is silenced by a closed hat, just like a real hi-hat.

You shape each voice with its own knobs (§7) and choose its sound from the sample library (§10).

Each voice is sculpted by its knobs across the three per-drum banks (base + Shift), plus the global controls when that drum is selected:

The pattern to remember: base layer = the thing you reach for most (Volume, Pattern, Intensity); Shift layer = its sound-shaping partner (Decay, Div, Pitch). Global knobs give you master versions of tone, drive, reverb, and reactivity — and focus on a single drum when you select one on the grid.

This is where SpaceDrum earns "the drummer that fits on your desk."

Style picks the drummer, Pattern picks how they play it, Intensity picks how busy they are, and Flair is how much they improvise.

• Style (global, and per-drum offset) — which drummer you've got. Sweeps from loose and funky, through classic pocket, to four-on-the-floor, driving, and swung/triplet feels.
• Pattern (per drum) — how that drummer treats the Style. Sweeps from raw and lean to pushed, syncopated, and chopped/broken. Each drum has its own Pattern, so the kick can stay grounded while the hats get busy.
• Intensity (per drum) — how much each voice plays. Low = sparse and spacious; high = busy and driving — and hits appear in order of importance (backbone first, ghost notes last), so every level is a real groove. Your primary on-the-fly arrangement control. At zero, that drum rests.
• Flair (global + per drum) — how much they improvise. Controlled variation added each bar: a little keeps the groove human; a lot makes it genuinely improvise.
• Swing — machine-wide shuffle/groove feel (8th feel by default; Shift switches to 16th feel), and you can choose which drums swing (select a drum to toggle its swing) so the hats can shuffle over a straight kick. Full swing approaches a triplet feel, and it holds through tempo changes.
• Time signature — SpaceDrum isn't locked to 4/4. It plays in 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, and 7/4, so waltzes, Take-Five-style 5/4, and 7/4 grooves are all on the table — not just straight four. Set it with Shift + the grid (Appendix A). Time signature is part of a saved beat (§11), so each recalled beat brings its own meter.
• Div (per drum) — sets how fast a given drum subdivides (quarters → 8ths → 16ths → 32nds → 64ths), so hats can run doubles while the kick stays on the floor.

PartMaker — arrangement that evolves

Turn on Parts and SpaceDrum builds a song structure — it moves between sections (think verse / chorus / breakdown) instead of looping one bar forever. You set how many parts, how long they run, and how much each drum changes between them (Part shift / Part length on the global bank).

• Parts Active — hold to force the main part momentarily; double-click to latch it.
• Shift + Parts On arms a clean, bar-aligned (re)start.
• Capture per-part changes — hold Parts On and adjust. With Parts running, hold the Parts On button — it lights to show it's capturing — and turn any knob (or mute a drum): whatever you change is written into the current part instead of the base groove — its own sound design, its own mutes, its own fills. Let go and that part keeps the change while the rest of the arrangement plays on untouched. It's non-destructive — the base settings return the moment the part steps aside, and everything you capture rides in the saved beat.
• Give a part its own length — hold Parts On + Shift, turn Part length. Set a bar length just for that part (global knob 5, Shift) so a chorus can run longer than the verse. Each part's length is independent and saved with the beat.

FillMaker — fills like a drummer

Turn on Fills and SpaceDrum breaks the loop with expressive fills at musical moments. Fill level sets how often/how wild; Fill length sets their size.

• Fills Active — hold for a fill right now; double-click to latch fills on.
• Capture per-part fills — hold Fills On and dial it in. Hold the Fills On button (it lights while capturing) and set Fill level / Fill length to lock a fill character into the current part — including triplet fills — so each section fills its own way.

Between Style, Intensity, Flair, Parts and Fills, a single seeded groove can carry a whole arrangement — which is the point.

PlayMaker — record your own loop

Where the generative engine composes rhythms for you, PlayMaker lets you play them yourself. Perform and record your own rhythm loop that runs right alongside the generated groove: lay down a pattern, loop it, and overdub as many layers as you like. Where your loop and the generated groove land on the same drum, the louder hit wins — so the two engines share the kit instead of fighting over it. PlayMaker is the hands-on counterpart to Style and Pattern, and your live playing always sounds through while you record.

PlayMaker loops stay locked to the master clock, so they're always in time — a loop never restarts out of sync, even after you stop it and pick it back up.

The two controls. PlayMaker has just two controls — RECORD and CONTROL. Dedicated RECORD and CONTROL buttons arrive in a future edition; on current SpaceDrums you reach them with a Shift chord:

• Shift + the Hat 2 pad = RECORD
• Shift + the Crash pad = CONTROL

While you hold Shift, those two pads become PlayMaker's controls; without Shift they play their drum as normal. Three gestures do everything: tap (a quick press), hold (press and hold), and double-tap (two quick presses).

• RECORD tap steps the loop forward through its cycle: start recording → tap to close it into a playing loop → tap to overdub a new layer → tap to lock that layer in. (A take also closes on its own after one full loop, snapping neatly to the bar.)
• CONTROL tap = undo / redo — tap once to undo your last layer, tap again to bring it back (single level).
• CONTROL hold = stop — pauses the loop but keeps it. (If you're still laying down your first take, a hold aborts that take instead.)
• CONTROL double-tap = clear — erases the loop so you can start fresh.
• To resume after a stop, tap CONTROL: the loop picks back up in sync with the current beat — never out of time, never from the top.

At a glance:

Reactivity is SpaceDrum listening to the room and playing along.

This is the part that feels like magic: you jam, and the machine jams back. Feed an external instrument into SpaceDrum's two audio inputs — a synth, guitar, drum machine, turntable, a bass DI, a whole mix (use them as one mono, one stereo, or two independent sources) — and turn on Reactivity. SpaceDrum follows the energy of what it hears, per frequency band, and modulates what the drums play to match. It changes what the drums decide to play, in time with the music you feed it — it is not an audio effect on the drum sound.

Just two controls, and that's the whole vocabulary:

• Amount (the Reactivity knob) — a center-detent control. Center = off (the beat plays untouched). Turn right and the drums take space — the more the input plays, the more they play. Turn left and they make space — the more the input plays, the more the drums pull back, so you can play against your source. Kit-wide, or per-drum when a drum is selected.
• Bias (hold Shift + the Reactivity knob) — points each drum's "ear" at part of the spectrum: center = its natural band, one way = bass-biased, the other = treble-biased. So the kick can follow your bassline while the hats track the top end.

Buttons & extras

• Reactivity button — taps to toggle listening on/off. Hold it to turn the Master-Volume knob into a live input level (Sensitivity); Shift + tap toggles passthrough (monitoring the input through SpaceDrum).
• Watch the drum lights: each drum's indicator glows green when it's reacting positively (taking space) and red when reacting negatively (making space) — dark means it isn't reacting.

Reactivity is a performance tool — ride Amount to lean the drums into a build and pull back for a breakdown, all driven by the sound you're feeding it.

Every voice plays a sound sample, and each voice holds 16 sample slots you can pick from and swap on the fly.

• Choosing a sound. Select a drum, enter sample-select on the grid, and the 16 lit pads become that drum's 16 slots — pick one and it plays instantly. (Or set the Sample parameter for that drum from a controller/COMMAND.)
• Factory sounds. SpaceDrum ships with a curated collection of classic drum-machine sounds — think the lineage of the TR-808 / 909 / 707 / 606, CR-78, LinnDrum, Oberheim DMX, and more — loaded across the eight voices and ready to play.
• Your own samples. Load a WAV onto any drum slot through the COMMAND app (§14): connect over USB, drag the file onto the slot, and COMMAND copies it to SpaceDrum. Samples should be WAV, 44.1 kHz, 16-bit.

Swapping sounds is meant to be part of playing — change a drum's sound mid-groove and hear it immediately.

SpaceDrum saves a beat — a complete snapshot of the machine: every drum's sample, tuning, decay, the generative settings, time signature, mixer levels, Flair, and swing.

• Save a beat from the panel; recall it from the panel. Your saved beats are stored on the instrument.
• SpaceDrum has 16 beat slots. An early free update loads them with up to 16 factory beats — classic grooves across many genres (see §12 and the Beats Guide) — ready to play and to use as starting points; save over any slot to make one your own.
• Beats are recalled by slot.
• The save format is versioned, so future updates can read your old beats instead of breaking them — your work is safe across updates.
• Coming via a free update: beat portability — your beats will live in a single file you can back up or move to another SpaceDrum over USB (§14 / §15).

An early free update loads the 16 slots with these factory beats — the grooves that built modern music, each ready to play and to make your own:

Audio out

SpaceDrum's sound comes out its 1/4" outputs — connect them to powered speakers, a mixer, or an audio interface. Multiple outputs let you take individual drums to separate channels for live mixing or recording.

Audio in (the "listening" inputs)

The 1/4" inputs feed SpaceDrum the audio it reacts to (§9) and can pass through to the outputs. Plug in any line-level source.

MIDI (DIN)

5-pin MIDI In and Out let SpaceDrum sync with the rest of your rig:

• As the master clock (default) — SpaceDrum sends MIDI clock and Start/Stop out the DIN, and its drum sequence plays out on MIDI channel 10, so external gear locks to it.
• As a follower — SpaceDrum can instead follow an incoming DIN (or USB) clock.

USB — one cable to your computer

A single USB cable makes SpaceDrum a class-compliant device that carries three things at once:

1. Multichannel audio — record each drum and the main mix straight into your DAW (12 channels in / 4 out, 48 kHz), and monitor.
2. USB-MIDI — clock, notes, and full parameter control to/from your DAW.
3. A drive — for transferring samples, beats, and updates via the COMMAND app.

COMMAND is SpaceDrum's companion desktop app. Connect one USB cable and COMMAND becomes the bridge between SpaceDrum and your computer. Today and as it grows, COMMAND lets you:

• Load your own samples — drag a WAV onto a drum slot; COMMAND checks the format (WAV / 44.1 kHz / 16-bit) and copies it to SpaceDrum. (Rolling out voice-by-voice — §10.)
• Keep SpaceDrum current — receive and apply sound-engine and firmware updates (§15).
• Full parameter control (coming via a free update) — see and edit every parameter from your computer, live.
• Back up and move beats (coming via a free update) — manage your saved beats from the app.

SpaceDrum improves over its life through free updates — new sounds, features, and fixes.

How updates apply. SpaceDrum appears to your computer as a drive. An update (the sound engine, samples, the library, or the panel firmware) is copied on via COMMAND, and installs on the next restart — SpaceDrum backs up what it replaces, so an update is safe and reversible. A bad or interrupted update never bricks the instrument: it simply keeps running the version it had.

What's user-updatable: the sound engine, the sound/sample library, your beats, and the panel firmware.

The update mechanism is built and designed fail-safe, and the full COMMAND-driven update experience keeps getting better — that's the promise of an instrument that grows with you.

• Use the included power supply. SpaceDrum runs on 5 V and draws real current when all the drums and lights are going. The supplied adapter is sized for it — don't substitute a small USB-C phone charger or power the unit over the USB data cable; an underpowered supply is the most common cause of glitches or dropouts under heavy playing. (Power, not processing, is the instrument's true limit — give it the supply it wants and it runs indefinitely.)
• Powering down. Switch off at the power switch. Your saved beats are stored safely on the instrument.
• Handling & environment. It's a handmade instrument with a wood enclosure and metal panel — keep it dry, out of direct heat, and don't block any vents. Clean with a dry or barely-damp cloth.
• Service. SpaceDrum is serial-numbered and repaired by ALAN Instruments in Chicago — reach out rather than opening the enclosure.

For power users. Base = normal; Shift = hold Shift. Per-drum order: kick · snare · rim · tom · perc · hat1 · hat2 · crash.

Per-drum knob banks

Global bank (8 knobs)

Buttons

PlayMaker controls (current units). Reach PlayMaker's two controls with a Shift chord — Shift + Hat 2 pad = RECORD · Shift + Crash pad = CONTROL (dedicated buttons coming in a future edition). RECORD tap cycles record → play → overdub; CONTROL tap = undo/redo, hold = stop, double-tap = clear. See §8.

Every parameter on SpaceDrum is reachable over MIDI — nothing is hidden from a DAW or controller. SpaceDrum sends and receives on MIDI channel 10.

• Direct CCs give hands-on control of the most-played global controls, for live performance.
• NRPN reaches every parameter, for total recall: send CC 99 (parameter MSB) and CC 98 (parameter LSB) to select a parameter, then CC 6 (data MSB) and CC 38 (data LSB) to set its value. The NRPN parameter number is the same number the save format uses for that field, so what you automate is exactly what a saved beat stores.

Key global CCs

Per-drum bank convention

Each of the eight voices — kick · snare · rim · tom · perc · hat 1 · hat 2 · crash — has its own set of parameter numbers (Pattern, Intensity, Div, Pitch, Decay, Drive, Filter, Reverb, Volume, Flair, Bias, Sample). Reach them over NRPN using each voice's field number, offset in that fixed order — for example Pattern is 11 (kick), 14 (snare), 17 (rim)…; Intensity is 13 (kick), 16 (snare), 19 (rim)…. Reactivity Bias and per-drum Sample are NRPN-only (no direct CC).