YSAD

YSAD (You Suck At Drums) is a circular drum sequencer you play like an instrument. Pick a style: House, Boom-bap, Breaks, Half-time, Trap, Techno, Funk, Garage, or one of seven in other meters: Waltz 3/4, Ballad 6/8, Shuffle 12/8, Limp 5/8, Backbeat 7/8, Rolling 7/8 and Dance 9/8. Then shape it with eight knobs: Intensity, Swing and Take for the whole beat, and Kick, Snare, Perc and Hats for how busy each drum is. Turn them while it plays and the beat follows. The beat is drawn around a circle, one ring per drum, so you can see the groove's shape at a glance. Click a step to add or remove a hit, and right-click to lock it: the generator works around everything you set. Same settings, same beat: a style, its knobs and a Take always give the same pattern, so a groove you like is easy to find again. YSAD sends MIDI, not sound. Put any drum rack, sampler or synth after it. Play it live, or record its MIDI into a clip to keep and edit a beat. (The drums in the video are an 808 kit, just for the demo.) Requirements: macOS 12 or later (Apple silicon or Intel), and a host that sends a plugin's MIDI to an instrument, such as Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio or Reaper. Audacity can't use it: it hosts no instruments and routes no MIDI. YSAD started at Music Hackspace's Music Technology Hackathon in Lisbon, in May 2026. It collects no personal data and makes no network connections.