How do I create my own beat fills on the Play?

You can create custom beat fills on the Play. To successfully create a beat fill, these exact steps must be followed. Deviating from the steps below can result in beat fills that do not populate the grid. The most important step is loading the folders in the order listed in step 2.

Create the Beat Fill Pattern

  1. Create a New Project
  2. Select “Load Files or Folders in the sample menu and load folders in the following order. (Sample folders MUST be loaded in this order):
    Bass (reserved for future use)
    Kick
    HiHat
    Snare
  3. Create patterns with:
    a. Kick on Track 1
    b. Snares on track 2
    c. Hats on track 3.
  4. Save your project.

Note: All parameters will save to a beat fill. Beat fills will only populate 16 steps. Add chance actions to create beats with more variety.

Move the Pattern to the “Beat Fills” folder

Every pattern created in accordance with the steps above can be imported as a beat fill template by moving them into the beat fill folder on your SD card.
1. From a computer open the project folder. Then open the pattern folder and select the desired pattern.
2. Move it to the ‘BeatFills’ folder in the root directory.
3. Rename it to any name that fits the fill screen, such as “LoFi_1.pattern.”
4. Restart the Play. The beat should be available for beat, kick, snare, and hihat fill options.

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That’s amazing! Never considered!

Polyend never stops to surprise my ingenuos self :slight_smile:

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This is interesting. Is a Bass fill on it’s way?

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I know it won’t be in the next update, but it could be added in the future. I think someone put in a feature request for melodic beat fills recently so I would suggest voting for that if you want to see it!

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I would love an app that could let you set specific fills on a desktop and then import it. In this way you could import libraries and manage them…

Hey you could make a special sample pack with bass inside the snare folder for example and use in this way while the bass track is added as a function:)

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There is also this little beat fill melody trick to get you going for now.

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That’s Melodic fill generator.

Thanks Polyend . This is excellent ! I was hoping we could have a feature where midi files can be converted to beatfills, so we could program those on a daw, save to SD and load it

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Interesting idea, feel free to request it. However that might require writing some custom software, and I’m not sure the development team would have time to take on a project of that scope - Or it could be simple, I’m not sure.

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Video Instructions

This is pretty cool. Thanks Polyend!

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So now that Bass and Melody Fills have been added to the firmware, can we get an update on this procedure? Specifically the load order of sample folders and track assignment.

This forum post appears to be the only source of instruction for this feature. It’s not in the manual, anywhere on the Polyend site, and this post is out of date.

Proper documentation is important. Please make an effort to keep up to date.

It is documented in detail on page 125 of the Play+ manual, I believe it is in the new OG Play manual as well. https://polyend.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Play_Plus_Manual_Rev1.pdf

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My mistake - the feature is indeed mentioned in the manual, and I have what I need. Thank you Mitch.

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No problem, I had someone try it today and had problems with melody so going to double check that it is correct.

Okay. I’ll be trying it myself today so I’ll keep that in mind if I encounter any issues.

Thanks again.