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Controls, behaviour and the connections between them.

Checked against KerBy 0.9.0 · 24 September 2026

Signal flowWhere does the sound go? →Trace the kick, bass and reverb through the instrument.

Live & Draw

The header’s Live and Draw buttons set up two ways of playing. You can still change their individual switches afterwards.

Live: Enables Quantize and both Rate switches. Held notes become repeating pulses.
Draw: Disables Quantize and both Rate switches. Each MIDI note triggers one pulse in both kick and bass; the voices do not have separate MIDI note lanes.
A mark beside the mode: The settings have been changed from that mode’s defaults. Click the mode again to restore those defaults.

Note length matters. For repeated bass pulses between kicks, hold the note or play legato with the bass Rate on. With one pulse per note, a short note can end while the bass is still ducked, before it’s heard.

The header’s Draw mode is separate from the shape editor’s drawing tool, toggled with B.

Rate, Length & timing

Rate: How often a held note retriggers. Right-click Rate for its timing mode, Triplet and its home; synced divisions follow the DAW tempo, while Free runs from 0.1Hz to 100Hz. Switching to Free starts at the division’s speed at the current tempo, so the rhythm carries on.
The Rate on/off box: With repetition off, a note triggers one pulse. The Rate value still sets where Quantize places it. Turning it back on while a note is held brings the pulses back.
Triplet: In the Rate knob’s right-click menu, switches the dotted choices to triplets. Straight divisions stay the same.
Length: How much of a bar a pulse lasts. It controls the hit’s duration, independently of Rate. A new pulse can interrupt it.
Q — Quantize: While the DAW is playing, moves a note that arrives off the beat forward to the next division of that voice’s Rate, so a late press still lands in time. Dotted rates use their plain division. Notes already on the grid play as written.
K — Launch with Kick: With Quantize on, the bass waits for the kick’s division instead of its own, so both voices start together. Switch it off to let a faster bass come in ahead of the first kick.
Restart on Kick: In the bass Rate knob’s right-click menu. The bass starts its pattern again at each kick. When the rates divide evenly, this changes nothing. With a dotted, triplet or Free rate, switching it off lets the bass run across the kick as a polyrhythm. With a bass Rate slower than the kick’s, leaving it on makes the bass play with every kick. Separate from K, which controls the first launch.

Return Home

The home button at the right of the bottom bar, beside the step row and keyboard buttons. Press it to undo a performance in one move: each Rate knob goes to its home, both bend wheels return to centre, and every other control set to go home follows. Synced rates land straight back on the grid. The button flashes whenever a return happens, including one from a controller.

Home: Each voice’s Rate has one, and so does every knob on the voices’ tabs and More tabs, each macro, each LFO’s rate, Glitch, Reverse and Launch with Kick. It starts as the value the patch or preset loaded with. Right-click the control and choose Set as home to move it.
The home tick: A short mark on a knob’s track shows where home is. A knob that doesn’t go home shows none.
Goes home: In the same right-click menu. The rates, the wheels, the macros, the LFO rates, Glitch, Reverse and Launch with Kick go home to start with; untick one to leave it where it is when you return. The sound knobs stay put until you tick theirs.
Double-click: Sends a knob to its home, even with its Goes home unticked.
Bend wheels: Always return to centre. Their home can’t be moved.
On a controller: Return Home is a plugin parameter, so any DAW’s MIDI mapping can put it on a button. Momentary buttons, toggles and pads that only send “on” all work. Map the button to the parameter directly, not through a macro.
Switching Goes home live: Every Goes home switch is a parameter too. Map one to a button to take that control out of Return Home, or put it back, without opening its menu.
What stays put: Rate on/off, Sync or Free, Triplet, the wheels’ ranges and any control whose Goes home is unticked.

Key, Tune & pitch

Key: In each More tab. MIDI follows played notes; a fixed note keeps that voice on one pitch while you play the other.
Tune: Transposes a voice in semitones.
Pitch tab: A drawn pitch sweep for each hit. Amt sets its depth; the tab’s box enables or bypasses it.
Bend: The bass’s continuous pitch offset, available in More.
Glide: The bass’s slide time between notes.

Wave & the shape editor

Wave: One repeating oscillator cycle, or a loaded sample. A waveform’s horizontal axis is one cycle, rather than a whole hit.
Wave Shape: Morphs the oscillator from your drawing through Sine, Triangle, Ramp Up, Ramp Down, Square and Sidechain Duck. A fixed shape picked from the Wave tab’s shape menu moves it to that stop; route a macro or LFO to it on the Matrix page to sweep between them. Editing a morphed shape makes it your drawing, unless a route is holding it. A loaded sample ignores it.
Amp: The level over the duration of a hit.
Filter: A low-pass cutoff sweep over each hit. Amt sets the sweep’s depth. Bypassing the tab opens the filter. The kick’s has no Reso knob: its resonance rises as the cutoff comes down.
Shape presets: Right-click a shape or its tab to choose a starting curve.
Points: Click a segment or double-click empty space to add a point. Double-click a point to remove it. Shift-drag snaps to the grid.
Drawing tool: Focus the shape editor and press B to paint one step per grid cell. B or Esc leaves the tool. X and Y set the grid divisions. Points are hidden while it is on.

A shaded stretch at the end of a shape is the part the pattern never reaches: each pulse ends, or the next one arrives, before the envelope gets there. Change Rate or Length and it moves. The Click envelope uses its sample’s timeline, and Duck uses its own Rate.

Wave samples

Drop an audio file onto either voice’s Wave tab, or use its file button. The voice plays it as a one-shot in place of the drawn oscillator. A new pulse retriggers it; played pitch changes playback speed.

Start: Moves the beginning of playback into the file. Use Length and Amp to shape the hit’s duration.
Pitch and Filter after loading: Loading a Wave sample switches these envelopes off where present. Enable their tab boxes to process the sample.
Removing a sample: The cross in the Wave plot returns to the drawn oscillator and turns those envelopes back on.
Saving: Sample audio is embedded in presets and session state.

The Click layer

A second sample on the kick, mixed alongside its main source. Every kick pulse starts the layer.

Amt: The click’s own level. The kick’s main volume and mute also affect it.
Envelope and Start: Shape the sample on its own timeline and choose where playback begins.
HP: A high-pass filter that removes low frequencies from the click.
Pitch and padlock: Pitch changes playback speed. Locked keeps it independent of played notes; unlocked enables note tracking.
Processing: FM and Tone reach the click. Crush acts on the combined kick and click. The click also enters the kick’s reverb send. Filter, Spread and Noise belong to the main source.

Tone, FM, Noise & Crush

Tone: Saturation that adds odd harmonics. It acts before the amplitude envelope, including within the Click layer.
FM Amt and Ratio: Amt sets modulation depth; Ratio sets the modulator’s pitch relative to the note. It can reshape the oscillator, a Wave sample and the Click sample.
Noise: A noise layer that follows the main amplitude envelope. Its tone also follows the filter cutoff.
Spread: Detuned stereo unison. The noise layer widens along with the oscillator stack.
Crush: Sample-rate reduction. It processes the voice’s combined output before the volume control.
Reso: Resonance around the bass filter’s cutoff, up to self-oscillation at the top.
Mono lows: Everything below 120Hz is summed to mono on each voice. Always on, with no control.

Duck & Reverb

Duck curve: The bass’s gain after each kick pulse. Low values reduce the bass; high values let it through.
Duck Amt: Depth of the curve’s effect. 0% leaves the gain unchanged; 100% follows the curve fully.
Duck Rate: How long the curve takes to play. Each kick restarts it; after it finishes, its final level holds until the next kick.
Duck Smooth: Beside Duck Rate. Turns jumps in the curve into ramps; 0% plays the curve as drawn.
Duck bypass: The box on the Duck tab disables ducking for both the bass and the kick’s reverb.
Reverb Amt: The kick’s reverb send, in More. The wet tail follows the bass’s ducking gain.
Reverb LP and Size: LP filters the wet signal’s high end, low enough to leave only the rumble; Size controls the room’s decay, down to a tight, short room below 25%.

The dry kick stays outside the duck. Changing Duck Amt affects both the bass and the reverb tail.

The bass step row

Show the row from the bottom bar. It stores allowed positions, pitch offsets and step lengths over a pattern from one step to two bars long; Rate decides when pulses try to play.

Tap: Switch a box on or off.
Drag sideways: Paint a run of boxes on or off.
Drag vertically: Tune that step by up to 24 semitones either way. Turning the box off keeps its pitch setting.
Drag a step’s right edge: Stretch the step over the ones after it, making one longer note. Double-click the edge to undo it, or right-click the row for Reset step lengths.
− and +: At the row’s ends, shorten or lengthen the pattern a step at a time. Hold to repeat. A pattern shorter or longer than a bar repeats on its own cycle against the bar. Right-click the row and choose One bar long to reset it.
Folded corner: The steps under this box disagree, because they were set at a faster Rate: some are off or tuned differently. Rest the pointer on it to see each one.
Free rate mode: The bar-based step row is inactive when the bass uses a free-running Hz rate.

Glitch, Bend, Reverse & MIDI out

Glitch: On each voice’s More tab. Rolls and dropouts inside each pulse, in time with the beat: an occasional 1/16 roll at low settings, fast rolls that change speed at the top. A kick roll that repeats the hit ducks the bass and sends MIDI out like a pulse.
Pitch wheel: Bends the voices’ pitch. Right-click the wheel for its range and whether it goes home.
Tempo wheel: Bends KerBy’s beat clock against the DAW’s tempo. Right-click for its range, walk back and whether it goes home.
R — Reverse: Captures one kick-rate period and plays the finished voice audio backwards, after ducking and reverb.
MIDI out: A short MIDI note leaves KerBy on each kick pulse, for triggering or sidechaining other devices. In Ableton Live, use the VST3 for MIDI output.

The Matrix

The modulation page. Open it from the pair of icons in the footer, or press N. Up to sixteen routes each connect a source to nearly any control on either voice.

Macros: Eight knobs to map to anything. Four show to start with; the + beside them reveals more, and right-clicking one hides it. A hidden macro keeps working. Click a macro’s name to rename it.
LFOs: Up to four drawn modulators, added with +. Each has a rate, Sync or Free, and a curve you draw in the same editor as the voices’ shapes, or a live random mode.
Shape: Morphs an LFO from your drawing through Sine, Triangle, Ramp Up, Ramp Down, Square and Sidechain Duck, and is itself something a route can move. Each voice’s Wave Shape works the same way.
Other sources: Both voices’ drawn envelopes, velocity, and the pitch and tempo wheels.
Making a route: Drag a macro’s name or an LFO’s label onto a control, or right-click the control and choose Modulate with. Destinations include the knobs, Length, the Volume faders, Reverse, the wheels and the Matrix page’s own controls.
Depth handle: A routed knob shows a small handle while you hover it. Drag it to set how far the route moves the knob; double-click to return it to its starting amount.
Routes in a menu: Right-click a routed control to see each route into it, with an amount you can drag.
Uni and Bi: A Uni route moves the control one way from where it sits; a Bi route moves it both ways around it.
Clear matrix: Removes every route and resets the macros and LFOs. There is no undo.

Presets & sessions

Presets carry sounds, shapes, step patterns and samples. Loading one keeps your current mode of play: Live/Draw, Quantize, launch behaviour, the Rate on/off switches and the Goes home switches stay where you put them. A preset brings its homes with it; one saved without them makes its own values home.

Session state also remembers the mode of play. Save a DAW project when you want the sound and the way you are playing it back together.

Window, scopes & gestures

Resize and scale: Stretch the window to give the editors more room. Right-click empty space for interface scaling and Reset window size.
Scopes: Show the voices against KerBy’s musical bar. Merge them to see where kick and bass overlap. With the transport stopped, a scope keeps the last bar its voice played.
Drag a scope out: Drag from a scope to drop what it shows into your DAW, or onto a Wave tab, as a WAV: a bar, or a quarter bar when zoomed. A voice’s scope gives that voice; the merged scope gives both. Files are kept in a Bounces folder beside your presets, so projects that use them don’t lose them.
Value reset: Double-click a value to return it to its home, or its default where it has none. The shape editor has its own point-editing gestures.
Tooltips and shortcuts: Hover a control to read its tooltip along the bottom. Open Shortcuts & gestures for the full editing vocabulary and platform-specific modifiers.