A starting point you can play with one held note.
-
Get the two voices running.
Load KerBy on a MIDI track, start from Init, and choose Live in the header. Hold a note on your keyboard or draw one long note in a MIDI clip. Init already has the kick Rate at 1/4 and the bass Rate at 1/16.
In 4/4, that gives you a kick on each beat and four bass pulses per beat (or three if we're ducking the first one). With quantization on, a note will wait for the next grid point before it starts.
-
Keep the kick on one note.
If you want to play a bassline while the kick stays in tune, open the kick’s More tab and set Key to the note you want. Leave the bass’s Key on MIDI. Play overlapping notes (legato) and listen to the bass move beneath the kick while the pulse continues.
-
Decide how long each hit lasts.
Adjust Length below the shape editor. Rate is the spacing between hits; Length is the duration of a hit. Try a short bass hit first, then lengthen it until the gap between pulses starts to fill.
If the next pulse arrives before a curve finishes, you will hear only the part it reaches. Slowing Rate is a useful way to hear the rest.
-
Play with Rate, then come home.
Let the quarter-note kick run for a phrase. Near the end, turn its Rate to a faster division for a short stutter. Try the same with the bass. Rate stays visible on every tab so you can keep playing the rhythm while shaping the sound.
Now press the home button at the right of the bottom bar, beside the step row and keyboard buttons. Both rates go back to where Init set them, 1/4 and 1/16, and both bend wheels return to centre. That’s the move to learn: go as far as you like, and one press puts the pattern back.
-
Put home on a button.
Use your DAW’s MIDI mapping to assign Return Home to a button on your controller, mapped straight to the parameter. Then you can keep one hand on a Rate knob and the other on the way back.
To come home somewhere else, set a Rate where you want it, right-click the knob and choose Set as home. Untick Goes home in the same menu to leave that voice out, so the bass can keep stuttering while the kick returns.
-
Put a little variation in the bass.
Show the bass step row from the bottom bar. Tap a box to leave a gap. Drag one of the remaining boxes up to +7 semitones, then play the pattern again.
The row marks positions in the bar. It lets pulses through or skips them; the bass’s Rate still provides the rhythm. Drag a step’s right edge over the next one to turn the two into a single longer note.
-
Try a MIDI clip in Draw mode.
Switch to Draw and replace the long note with a rhythm in the piano roll. Each note triggers both kick and bass together; there are no separate MIDI notes for the two voices. Draw turns off both Rate divisions, so each note starts one pulse in each voice.
Keep the notes long enough for the bass to reach past the initial duck. Very short notes can cut it off before you hear it.