How To Use ESSNCE

02 — Compose

Compose is a scratch pad for writing melodies. Think of it as a musical notepad — hum an idea, tap it onto a staff, or load a MIDI file. Your melody plays back with a real instrument sound, and you can send it to a sampler pad, a drum track, or straight into your arrangement.

• 1 The staff — five lines where notes appear. Tap to place notes, drag to change pitch, long-press to edit. Supports multiple instrument parts stacked vertically.
• 2 The keyboard — pitch keys (C through B), duration keys (whole, half, quarter, 8th, 16th), and modifiers (sharps, flats, ties, slurs). Hold a pitch key to draw a longer note. Octave up/down buttons shift the range.
• 3 Transport — play your melody through the built-in instrument engine. The playhead moves along the staff as it plays. Tap BPM to set tempo (20-300). Tap the time signature to pick from 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 6/8, 5/4, 7/8.
• 4 Instrument & export — tap the instrument chip to pick from piano, strings, synth voices, bass, and more. The overflow menu (⋯) lets you save, load MIDI files, or export as audio (WAV, FLAC, MP3).

MIDI Import

Load .mid files from your device. ESSNCE reads the notes, tempo, and time signature and puts them on the staff. Export your melody as MIDI (standard file, opens in any DAW) or rendered audio (WAV 16-bit, WAV 24-bit, FLAC, MP3 320k, MP3 128k).

Multi-Part Staff

Add multiple instrument parts stacked on the same staff. Each part can have its own instrument, clef, and volume. Great for writing piano arrangements with separate hands, or layering a bassline under a melody.

03 — Essynth

A synthesizer is an instrument that creates sound from scratch using electricity instead of strings or air. You shape the sound by adjusting controls — like sculpting with sound waves instead of clay. Essynth is built into ESSNCE and you can use its sounds anywhere: on sampler pads, in drum tracks, or playing melodies on the staff.

• 1 Four macro knobs — SHAPE (timbre, bright to dark), MOVE (animation and movement), BODY (low-end weight), AIR (high frequencies). The fastest way to tweak a sound.
• 2 The keyboard — a two-octave keyboard at the bottom. Multi-touch lets you play chords. Play harder for louder notes, softer for quiet ones. The A/B button lets you compare your tweaked sound against the original preset.

Browse and Design Modes

Browse shows preset sounds organised by category (Bass, Lead, Pad, Keys, FX, Drums). Use the search bar to find sounds by name. Design mode lets you build your own sound from scratch. Tap a preset to load it, then tap it again to open the designer.

Oscillators (OSC tab)

The sound source. Pick from sawtooth (buzzy), pulse (hollow), sine (pure and smooth), or noise (hiss). You get two main oscillators plus a sub oscillator. Mix them with the XY pad. Add FM (frequency modulation) for metallic tones or ring modulation for bell-like sounds.

Filter (FILT tab)

Shapes the tone. Low-pass removes high frequencies (makes things warmer/muffled). High-pass removes lows (makes things thin). Band-pass isolates a narrow band. The XY pad controls cutoff (brightness) and resonance (a sharp peak at the cutoff point).

Envelopes (ENV tab)

How the sound changes over time. Attack controls how fast the sound fades in. Decay controls how fast it drops to the sustain level. Sustain is the held volume. Release is how long the sound rings out after you let go. You get two envelopes: one for volume (AMP) and one for the filter (FILTER).

LFOs (LFO tab)

Low frequency oscillators that create repeating movement. Think of them as automatic knob-turners. Pick a wave shape (sine for smooth, square for on/off, saw for rising/falling, random for unpredictability) and a destination (pitch for vibrato, filter for wobble, volume for tremolo). Sync to tempo or trigger on each key press.

Mod Matrix (MOD tab)

Routes controls to parameters. Velocity (how hard you hit a key) can control volume or filter. The pitch wheel can bend notes up or down. Portamento makes notes slide smoothly into each other.

Save and Export

Save your sound as a preset (appears in Browse). Save as a template to use as a starting point for other sounds. Bake to library turns your preset into an audio sample. Export as a voice pack to share.

04 — Grab

The Grab captures audio from any source on your device.

• 1 Source selector — tap to switch between System Audio (captures from any app), Phone Mic, USB Mic, or MIDI controller. A fourth source, MIDI, appears when you connect a MIDI controller. Notes you play route directly to the sampler pads.
• 2 Amplitude meter — shows real-time input level. Adjust your source volume before recording. Also shows detected pitch and chord in real time.
• 3 Record button — tap to start, tap again to stop. Audio saves directly to the sampler. You can also import audio files from your device storage — tap the import button next to the source chips. Supported formats: WAV, MP3, FLAC, OGG, M4A, AAC, WMA.

Pitch & Chord Detection

While recording or monitoring, ESSNCE detects the pitch of the incoming audio in real time. The detected note name appears above the amplitude bar. When chords are present, the chord name updates as the harmony changes — so you can see what key your sample is in before you even touch a pad.

The edited sample name field appears above the pad selector — tap it to rename your sample before saving.

Stem Separation

Turn any recording into separate instrument layers. Capture a song — or import a file — and ESSNCE splits it into four isolated stems: drums, bass, other instruments, and vocals. Each stem can be previewed, mixed, and sent to its own pad.

• 1 Four stems — drums, bass, other instruments, and vocals. Each gets its own level slider (0-150%). Drag to balance how much of each stem you hear.
• 2 Per-stem level — isolate the drums to check the groove, or solo the vocals to grab an acapella. Each stem can be saved to its own pad with individual "Save to Pad" buttons, plus a "Save All to Pads" button.
• 3 A/B toggle & AI badge — flip between the original mix and the separated stems to hear exactly what was pulled out. Each stem row also has its own A/B toggle for solo comparison. The AI processing badge shows the processing time.

Project Reference

After you capture audio, ESSNCE detects the BPM, musical key, and chord automatically. These appear in a card below the waveform. You can edit any of them, then tap "Set As Project Reference" to lock in the tempo and key for your whole project.

Live Tuner

During recording, toggle the tuner to see the pitch and chord of the incoming audio in real time. When the app detects a clear note, a "Try on Essynth" chip appears — tap it to play that note through the synthesizer.

Capture Bubble & Quick Settings

The Capture Bubble is a floating overlay that lets you control recording from other apps without switching screens. The Quick Settings tile (Android 13+) gives you one-tap capture from the notification shade.

05 — Sampler Hub

The heart of ESSNCE. Load sounds onto pads, set loop points, chop samples, and design your sound.

• 1 Reel & Waveform — the spinning reel previews the selected pad's audio. Scrub by dragging the reel. Set loop IN/OUT points on the waveform to isolate sections. The display cycles through three modes — tap to switch: TAPE shows a spinning reel and waveform, WAVE shows a vintage-style bar meter for each pad, and OFF hides both to give pads maximum room.
• 2 64 Velocity Pads across 4 banks (A, B, C, D) — tap the bank chips to switch between banks — that's 64 sounds at your fingertips. Banks group your sounds into sets of 16. Long-press the bank chip to copy, paste, or clear an entire bank — useful for duplicating a setup to a fresh bank for variation. Where you tap on the pad matters: bottom = loud, top = soft. Orange dot = loaded. Each pad shows a small coloured dot — green means it fits well with the rest of your kit, orange means okay, red means it stands out (AI-powered cohesion analysis).
• 3 6-Channel Mixer — drag the faders to set volume per channel group. Each group of pads maps to a mixer channel. AUTO-MIX analyses the loudness of every pad and balances their volumes automatically.

Chopping a sample

• Select a pad with a loaded sample
• Set loop IN and OUT points on the waveform
• Hold the reel — particles appear
• Drag your finger down to an empty pad
• Release to drop the loop as a new sound

Auto-Chop

Tap the CHOP button in the toolbar. It detects beats in the selected sample and splits them across empty pads. Adjust sensitivity to get more or fewer slices.

Pad Sound Designer

Long-press any loaded pad to open the full sound designer. It has 4 tabs — tap each below to see what's inside.

Instrument Mode

Tap the +INSTR button to turn a pad into a full instrument. Load a synth voice or sample instrument, set a key range and velocity zones, then play it with the on-screen keyboard or a connected MIDI controller. Export it as a Decent Sampler or SFZ file.

Tool Tray

The tool tray includes CHRM (chromatic) — maps a tonal sample across all 16 pads in the current bank so you can play a piano riff with a single vocal chop. The EDIT mode pill in the header toggles between NORMAL mode (play pads) and EDIT mode (tap to assign samples, long-press to edit).

All-Pad EQ

The SYSTEM menu includes an All-Pad EQ — three bands (low, mid, high) that affect every pad at once. Useful for quick tonal shaping of your whole kit.

Melody Transcription

The REC hub includes Record Melody — hum or sing, and ESSNCE turns your voice into notes spread across your pads.

Kit Manager

Save your entire pad setup as a kit — all 16 pads per bank, their samples, volume levels, pan positions, effects, and sound designer settings. Kits save as portable .ekit files you can share, back up, or switch between instantly.

• Save a kit — open the kit manager from the toolbar, tap Save, give it a name. Everything on all pads is captured.
• Load a kit — browse your saved .ekit files from the manager. Tap to load — the entire pad layout switches in under a second.
• Rename or delete — long-press any kit in the browser for options.

Performance Recorder

Record your pad performance as audio. Tap record, play the pads, and your entire performance — every hit, every velocity nuance — is captured as a single audio file. Great for live finger-drumming takes or building layered loops.

• Tap the record button in the transport bar
• Play your performance on the pads
• Tap stop — the recording saves to your library
• Load it onto a pad to layer another take, or drop it into the editor timeline

FX Chain Editor

Each pad has its own effects chain. Stack multiple effects in order — reverb into delay, distortion into filter, whatever sounds right. Open the FX chain from the pad sound designer to add, reorder, or remove effects per pad. You can also load third-party CLAP plugin effects — import them from the Plugin Manager (in the tray drawer) and they appear in the FX chain browser alongside the built-in effects.

• Add effects — tap to browse available effects and slot them into the chain
• Reorder — drag effects to change the processing order (reverb before distortion sounds different from distortion before reverb)
• Per-effect controls — tap any effect in the chain to adjust its parameters

Time Stretching

The sound designer's Time Stretch control lets you change a sample's speed without changing its pitch — or change pitch without changing speed. Three modes give you different trade-offs between quality and character:

• OLA (Overlap-Add) — clean, transparent stretching. Best for tonal material like vocals, pads, and sustained sounds.
• Phase Vocoder — preserves harmonic clarity at extreme stretch ratios. Use when OLA sounds grainy.
• Auto — picks the best algorithm for your sample. The safe default.

Stretch a vocal phrase to half speed for an atmospheric pad, or squeeze a drum loop to double time for high-energy fills — all without the pitch artefacts you'd get from simple speed change.

06 — Drum Machine

16 tracks, variable-length step grid, 16 patterns, song arrangement, 17 built-in effects, and a full piano roll for melodic tracks.

• 1 BPM + Swing — drag the slider or tap TAP to set tempo by tapping. SW controls swing amount (0-100%) for groove.
• 2 Track rail — tap to select and audition. Long-press to open the assign sheet (load samples, set pan, assign choke group).
• 3 Step grid — tap to toggle steps. Drag vertically on an active step to change velocity. Long-press for micro-timing control.
• 4 FX rail — 17 built-in effects. Tap to toggle. REV (reverb), DLY (delay), DIS (distortion), LPF (low-pass), CMP (compressor), PEQ, and more.
• 5 Pattern bank — 16 patterns. Tap to switch. Long-press to copy/paste a pattern. Expand for colour coding and song arrangement.

Track Assign Sheet

Long-press any track in the rail to open the assign sheet. Here you can:

• Assign a sample from your repository to this track
• Set Pan — stereo position (L/C/R) so kicks sit centre and hats spread wide
• Set Choke Group (1-8) — tracks in the same group silence each other. Essential for open/closed hi-hat: when the closed hat fires, the open hat cuts off naturally

Step Editing

• Tap a step to toggle it on/off
• Drag vertically on an active step to change its velocity — higher velocity = brighter orange, louder hit
• Long-press an active step to open the parameter lock dialog: set exact velocity (0-100%) and micro-timing offset (-50 to +50ms) for swing and groove

Swing

The SW control in the BPM strip adds groove to your beat. It delays every other step by up to 33% (triplet feel). 0 = straight machine timing. 50-70 = classic hip-hop bounce. 100 = full triplet shuffle. Every drum machine has swing — it's what makes a beat feel human.

Tap Tempo

Tap the TAP button rhythmically. ESSNCE averages your last 8 taps to calculate BPM. Useful for matching tempo to a song you're sampling from.

Count-in Recording

Toggle the 4/4 button in the transport bar. When enabled, pressing REC plays 4 metronome clicks at current BPM before recording starts — so you can get in the groove before your performance is captured.

Pattern Management

• 16 patterns — tap pattern boxes to switch. Each pattern has its own 16-track step grid
• Long-press a pattern to COPY/PASTE — duplicate a pattern to a new slot, then edit the copy
• Song mode — toggle SONG in the transport. Chain patterns into an arrangement with section labels (INTRO, VERSE, CHORUS, etc.)

Modes

The bottom bar changes depending on what you're doing. Each mode opens a different set of controls:

• FILE — save and load kits
• GROOVE — time signature, grid subdivision, and count-in
• MIX — mixer, EQ, and effects
• FX — per-track effects
• TOOLS — quantize, humanize, draw tools, and pattern generator
• PATTERN — song arrangement and AI pattern tools
• CONNECT — MIDI configuration

Piano Roll

Switch from the step grid to the piano roll for melodic tracks. Draw notes on a piano-key grid instead of tapping steps. Choose a scale (Major, Minor, Pentatonic, etc.) and ESSNCE locks your notes to it. Ghost notes from other tracks appear faintly so you can see how everything fits together. Use the Draw, Erase, and Select tools to edit notes.

Grid Subdivision & Time Signature

The step grid supports subdivisions from 1/4 through 1/32T (triplet). Set the time signature with presets — 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, and more — from the GROOVE mode panel.

Pattern Generator (AI)

The generator now uses AI to search your sample library and pick sounds that fit your chosen genre. It can even suggest effects per track and recommend a BPM. Tap the dice to re-roll for a fresh pattern. You can also ask the AI to suggest a complementary track to what you've already programmed.

Humanise

Adds subtle timing variations to make programmed drums sound like a real drummer. Works differently for kicks, snares, and hi-hats — each instrument gets natural-feeling variations.

Copy Groove

Lift the timing feel from one track and apply it to another. Like copying the swing from a hi-hat pattern onto a shaker track.

Polymeter

Each track can have its own length, independent of the pattern. A 3-step hi-hat loop against a 4-step kick creates a polymeter — a classic trick for complex-feeling rhythms.

Per-Track EQ & Sends

Each track has a 3-band parametric EQ (low, mid, high) and individual reverb/delay sends. Shape each sound independently before it hits the master bus.

Automation

Record volume, pan, and pitch changes per step. Turn on automation recording, then move a fader while the sequencer plays — your movements play back on every loop.

Beatbox to Pattern

Tap record, beatbox your drum pattern into the mic, and ESSNCE converts it to steps on the grid.

Drum Kit Export/Import

Export your entire drum kit (all tracks, samples, effects, and patterns) as a portable file. Share it with other ESSNCE users or back it up. Import kits from files shared with you.

Per-Step Sound Lock & Pitch Offset

Override a track's sample on a specific step — put a different kick on beat 4, or a rim shot on just one snare hit. Each step can also have its own pitch offset for melodic variation within a drum track.

Note Repeat Strip

The note repeat strip below the grid retriggers a track at a set rate — hold a kick for 1/16th rolls, or a snare for 1/32nd fills.

Output Mode

The output toggle cycles through ALL (everything plays), ROLL (only melodic tracks), and DRUM (only drum tracks).

17 Built-In Effects

The FX rail on the right side of the step grid has 17 effects. Tap to toggle. Multiple effects can be active simultaneously — they chain in order.

• REV — Reverb. Adds space and depth. Makes drums sound like they're in a room or hall.
• DLY — Delay. Repeating echoes synced to BPM. Creates rhythmic trails behind each hit.
• CHR — Chorus. Thickens the sound by layering slightly detuned copies. Makes thin sounds fatter.
• FLG — Flanger. A sweeping, jet-engine-like effect. Dramatic on hi-hats and percussion.
• DIS — Distortion. Crunchy overdrive. Adds aggression and warmth to drums.
• LPF — Low-pass filter. Removes high frequencies. Makes things sound muffled or dark.
• HPF — High-pass filter. Removes lows. Makes drums tinny — useful for filtered breakdowns.
• PIT — Pitch shift. Raises pitch by 3 semitones. Great for risers and transitions.
• CMP — Compressor. Squashes dynamics — makes quiet parts louder and loud parts quieter. Glues the mix.
• SAT — Saturation. Warm analog-style soft clipping. Adds presence without harshness.
• BIT — Bit crush. Reduces to 8-bit audio. Retro, crunchy, lo-fi character.
• STP — Stutter. Chops the audio into rapid repeats. Classic glitch/EDM effect.
• PAN — Auto-pan. Moves the sound left-to-right rhythmically. Creates movement in headphones.
• TRM — Tremolo. Volume pulses up and down. Rhythmic, hypnotic effect.
• PEQ — Parametric EQ. Three-band equaliser for shaping the frequency balance.
• STR — Time-stretch. (Reserved for offline use.)
• ENV — Envelope follower. Auto-wah — the filter opens and closes based on how hard the drums hit.

Song Arranger

Chain your patterns into a full song structure. The song arranger lets you drag blocks — each representing a pattern — into a timeline. Label sections as INTRO, VERSE, CHORUS, BRIDGE, DROP, or OUTRO. The sequencer plays through the chain in order, repeating each block for the number of bars you set.

• Drag blocks to reorder sections — change the song structure without reprogramming any patterns
• Tap a block to cycle through section labels: INTRO, VERSE, CHORUS, BRIDGE, DROP, OUTRO
• Colour-coded patterns — assign a colour to each pattern so you can see the structure at a glance
• Toggle SONG mode in the transport to switch between pattern view and song arranger view

Per-Step Parameters

Beyond just on/off and velocity, each step has fine-grained controls that make your patterns feel alive:

• Probability — set a percentage chance that the step fires. A kick that only hits 70% of the time creates a looser, more human groove. Perfect for ghost notes and variation.
• Flam — adds a rapid double-hit before the main step. The second hit is quieter and slightly offset. Essential for realistic snare rolls and drum fills.
• Roll — subdivides the step into faster repeats (1/16, 1/32, 1/64). Turn a single hi-hat step into a rapid roll without cluttering the grid.
• Micro-timing — nudge a step forward or back in time by up to 50ms. Push the snare slightly ahead for urgency, or lay the hi-hat back for a relaxed pocket.

Long-press any active step to open the parameter lock dialog where all four controls are available per step.

07 — Editing Suite

Multi-track arrangement with up to 16 tracks, pinch-to-zoom, snap grid, automation, markers, and loop regions.

• 1 Timeline tracks — up to 16 tracks. Drag clips to arrange. Pinch to zoom in/out. Each track has independent volume and mute.
• 2 Clips — coloured blocks representing audio. Tap to select, drag to move. Long-press for trim, copy, delete. Each clip has its own gain control (-60 dB to +12 dB).
• 3 Transport + Export — SNAP toggles grid snapping. LOOP enables loop regions. EXPORT renders to FLAC, WAV, or MP3. Share arrangement bounces or individual clip slices via the system share sheet.

Waveform Editor

Tap any clip to open the full waveform editor — a single-sample view with precise controls. This is where you sculpt audio at the sample level.

• Selection — drag across the waveform to select a region. The selection highlights in orange. All edits (cut, copy, delete, normalise, reverse) apply to the selected region.
• Cursor — tap anywhere to place the cursor. Playback starts from the cursor position so you can audition from any point.
• Zoom — pinch to zoom in on the waveform down to individual samples. Essential for finding zero-crossing points before making cuts to avoid clicks and pops.

Trim & Fade Handles

Every clip has draggable handles on both ends:

• Trim handles — drag the edges of a clip inward to shorten it. The audio outside the trim is hidden, not deleted — drag back out to reveal it.
• Fade-in handle — drag the top-left corner of a clip to create a smooth volume ramp from silence. Prevents clicks at clip starts.
• Fade-out handle — drag the top-right corner for a smooth ramp to silence. Essential for clean clip endings and avoiding abrupt cut-offs.

Undo & Redo

Every edit is reversible. The editor keeps a full history — cut, paste, trim, delete, normalise, fade — all undoable. Tap undo to step back one action, redo to step forward. No limit on history depth within a session.

Silence Trimming

Remove dead air from the start and end of a sample automatically. The silence trimmer scans for audio above a threshold and cuts everything before the first sound and after the last. Useful when you've captured a sample with a long lead-in or recorded a take where you didn't hit the pad immediately. Slices can be sent directly to sampler pads — ESSNCE fills your pads with the individual hits.

Automation

Record volume, pan, and pitch changes over time. Turn on AUTO-REC in MIX mode, move a fader, and the movement is saved. Switch between track-level and clip-level automation with the TRK/CLP toggle. Draw mode lets you sketch automation curves by hand.

Markers

Place named markers at key points in your timeline (intro, drop, chorus). Jump between them during playback. Loop a section between two markers to focus on it.

Pattern Clips

Drum patterns appear on the arrange timeline as link clips. They stay connected to the original pattern — change the pattern and every instance updates. Bounce a pattern clip to turn it into audio.

Time Stretch

Change a clip's speed without changing its pitch. Stretch a sample to fit 2 bars, 4 bars, or match the project tempo. Double-tap to reset.

Edit Tools

The waveform editor has seven tools always visible: TRIM, CUT, COPY, SPLIT, PASTE, FADE, and SLICE. The tool name appears briefly when you switch so you always know which one is active.

Pitch Contour & Spectrogram

Overlay a PITCH CONTOUR (showing detected notes on a piano roll) or a SPECTROGRAM (showing frequencies as a heat map) on top of your waveform. Toggle them on and off in the edit toolbar.

Consolidate

Select multiple clips on the same track and glue them into a single clip.

Clip Gain

Each clip has its own volume control from -60 dB to +12 dB.

Crossfade

Add a smooth fade-in or fade-out to any clip directly on the timeline without opening the editor.

Clip Inspector

The CLIP INSPECTOR tray at the bottom shows everything about a selected clip — name, track, position, length, stretch ratio, and gain — with quick-action buttons to edit, split, mute, or delete.

Arrange Transport

When your arrangement is playing and you switch to another screen, a slim transport bar appears so you can stop playback or jump back to the editor.

Save, Load & Share

Save and load your arrangements. Share the arrangement bounce or individual clip slices via the system share sheet.

08 — Notation Editor

Notes are organised in the tray drawer (swipe from the right edge of the screen). This is where you store and manage your notation files. For quick melody sketching, use the Compose tab in the bottom nav.

• 1 Score editor — tap the staff to place notes. Drag notes up or down to change pitch. The staff supports multiple voices, chord stacking, lyrics, dynamics, and articulation markings.
• 2 Notation keyboard — pitch row (C through B), duration row (whole to 32nd notes), articulation row (staccato, accent, slur, tie), and dynamics row (pp through ff). Tap a note value then tap the staff to place it. For guitar or bass, the keyboard switches to a fretboard view showing strings and frets. For drums, it shows a pad grid.
• 3 Transport & export — PLAY plays your melody through a built-in instrument engine (piano, strings, and more via SFZ instruments). HUM captures your voice and turns it into notation. Export as MIDI (standard MIDI file, opens in any DAW), WAV 16-bit, WAV 24-bit, FLAC, MP3 320k, or MP3 128k.
• 4 Send to pad / arrange — once your melody is written, send it directly to a sampler pad as audio, or place it on the editor timeline as a clip.

Organisation

The notes screen has folders for organisation, a search bar, tag filtering (colour-coded chips), and two view modes (list and grid). Select multiple notes to move or delete them in bulk. Each note can hold a captured audio sample, a voice recording, a notation (melody on a staff), text notes, and lyrics — all in one place.

Hum-to-Notation

Hum or sing a melody into your phone's mic. ESSNCE detects the pitch of each note you sing, cleans up any wobble, and writes the result onto the staff — with the correct note names, durations, and rests. No keyboard required.

• Tap the HUM button in the transport bar
• Hum, sing, or whistle the melody clearly
• Tap stop — the detected notes appear on the staff
• Edit any note that needs adjusting — drag to fix pitch, change duration, or add articulations

Stem Transcription

Capture a full song, split it into stems, then transcribe each stem to notation automatically. ESSNCE uses different AI models for different instruments — vocals and bass get one treatment, everything else gets another. Not happy with the transcription? Tap Refine to adjust sensitivity and timing parameters and re-run it.

Instrument Playback

Your notes play through a built-in SFZ instrument engine — the same format used by professional sample libraries. Piano, strings, and more are available. Each note triggers a real recorded sample at the correct pitch and velocity. It sounds like an instrument, not a beep. When using a synth voice, each note gets extra controls: accent, ghost (soft hit), glide (slide into the note), filter shape, vibrato, probability (chance the note plays), and bend up/down.

Multi-Voice & Piano Staff

Write for two hands on a single staff. Right hand on the upper staff, left hand on the lower — standard piano notation. Each voice has independent dynamics and articulations. Use it for piano pieces, lead sheets with a bassline, or layered melodies.

Score Elements

Add bar changes (tempo or time signature shifts mid-song), hairpins (getting louder or softer over time), and numbered endings (1st/2nd/3rd time bars). Ornaments include trill, mordent, turn, grace note, glissando, and octave shift markings. Stack notes into chords with the chord picker — choose from common intervals.

Export

• MIDI — standard MIDI file, opens in any DAW (Ableton, FL Studio, Logic, GarageBand). Tempo, note lengths, and velocities are preserved.
• WAV 16-bit — rendered audio through the instrument engine
• WAV 24-bit — higher bit depth for professional use
• FLAC — lossless compressed format
• MP3 320k — high-quality compressed
• MP3 128k — smaller file size for quick sharing

09 — Sample Library

The Library is accessed from the tray drawer (swipe from the right edge). Browse, preview, search, and import samples from a structured folder system. Everything you capture or import lives here.

• 1 Breadcrumb navigation — clickable breadcrumbs show your current folder path. Tap any segment to jump back.
• 2 Folder hierarchy — samples are organised by type. Tap a folder to open it, tap a sample to preview. Beyond the app's built-in library, you can browse your device's actual Music/ESSNCE folder. Link folders without copying (aliases), or import them by copying or moving.
• 3 Sample preview — tap any sample to hear it. The waveform icon gives a quick visual reference of the sound. Tap the orange dot to load it onto a pad.

Multi-Select & Tags

Long-press any sample to enter multi-select mode. Select several samples at once to move, tag, delete, or run stem separation on them. Tags are colour-coded labels you assign to samples. The tag filter bar shows your most-used tags first. The tag editor lets you create new tags with custom colours. Sort samples by name, newest first, or duration.

Stem Separation from Library

Select any sample in the library and run stem separation directly — no need to capture it again. The separated stems appear in a sub-folder next to the original sample.

Importing Audio

ESSNCE supports importing audio files in these formats: WAV, MP3, FLAC, OGG, AAC, M4A, WMA, OPUS, 3GP, and AMR. Imported files are automatically converted to the app's native 44.1 kHz format so they play back cleanly.

• Tap the import button in the Library toolbar
• Browse your phone's storage and select an audio file
• The file appears in your library, ready to load onto a pad or assign to a drum track

Project vs Default Library

ESSNCE has two library modes: the Default Library (your permanent collection, stored in app-private storage) and the Project Library (samples bundled inside the current .essketch project). Switch between them from the Library toolbar. Use the Default Library for sounds you want available everywhere; use the Project Library to keep a project self-contained for sharing.

10 — Tips & Hidden Features

Long-press actions

• Long-press a sampler pad to open sound designer (ADSR, filter, FX)
• Long-press a drum track to assign samples, set pan, set choke group
• Long-press a pattern box to copy/paste patterns
• Long-press an active step for micro-timing and velocity control
• Long-press a sample in the Library to rename, delete, or send to pad
• Long-press a note on the staff to change its pitch, duration, or articulation

Velocity

On sampler pads, tap position controls velocity — bottom of the pad = full volume, top = soft. On the drum grid, drag vertically on an active step to adjust its velocity.

Count-in recording

Tap the 4/4 button in the drum transport bar to enable count-in. When you press REC, four metronome clicks play before recording starts.

Tap tempo

Tap the TAP button in the drum BPM strip repeatedly. It averages your last 8 taps to set the BPM.

Stem separation workflow

Capture audio → split into stems → preview each stem independently → send drums to a pad, bass to another, vocals to a third. Build an entire track from one recording.

Hum-to-notation

Don't know music theory? Just hum. The app detects your pitch, smooths out any wobble, and writes the notes on the staff. Edit from there.

Kits for live performance

Save different kit setups for different songs. Switch between them during a live set without stopping playback. Each kit loads in under a second.

Time stretching by mode

For clean vocal stretching use OLA mode. For extreme slowdowns where clarity matters, switch to Phase Vocoder. For quick results, leave it on Auto.

Auto-save & crash recovery

Auto-save is configurable in Settings. Choose your interval (1 to 30 minutes), how many versions to keep, and the recovery window. If the app closes unexpectedly, a recovery dialog appears on next launch with your latest work.

Keyboard shortcuts (external keyboard)

Space = play/stop. Numbers 1-9 = select pattern. Arrow keys = navigate steps.

Lite Mode

On older or lower-end devices, enable Lite Mode in Settings. This disables the heavier AI features so the app runs smoothly.

MIDI Clock

Connect a hardware sequencer or drum machine via MIDI, and ESSNCE locks its tempo to the external clock.

Undo/Redo

The Editor and Drum screen both have full undo and redo. The Editor keeps up to 64 steps of history.

Per-Step Sound Locks

In the drum grid, you can override a track's sample on a specific step. Put a different kick on beat 4, or a rim shot on just one snare hit.

Polymeter

Set individual track lengths to create overlapping rhythmic cycles (like a 5-step pattern against a 4-step beat).

BLE MIDI

Bluetooth MIDI devices reconnect automatically when you turn them on.