Flash Drum

A free drum machine plugin (VST3, Windows). Flash Drum started as a sidekick for a Roland TR-606 and grew into a full instrument: a 64-step sequencer driving 14 modular lanes, each one able to host any of 25 instruments — synthesized, sampled, modelled or hybrid.

Download the latest version · Beta — feedback and bug reports welcome in Issues.

Highlights

Sound engines

• 25 instruments on 14 modular lanes — every lane can host a different instrument and hold its own sound settings.
• Synthesized voices — Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, Tom, Clap, Ride, Cymbal, an 808-style kick and percussion.
• TR-606 multisamples — every hit picks a different layer, like the hardware.
• Six modelled 606 voices — ported from analogcode's open-source models.
• SDrex — a metallic snare with filter modulation, flanger feedback and dedicated modulation envelopes.
• Buzz — a tonal-percussion voice with adjustable noise, a fast gate and a machine-gun retrigger.
• Rift — slices a long embedded or custom texture with Offset, Wander, Advance, Grain, Loop and Reverse.
• One-Shot — drop your own WAV file on the grid and play it from any start point, forward or reversed.
• Full sound editor — oscillator/sample, amp envelope, pitch envelope, filter, modulation, distortion and output sections per instrument.
• Analog drift and five distortion flavours — SoftClip, Valve, Transistor, HardClip and Tape, with pre-/post-filter routing.

Sequencer

• 64 steps on 4 pages, with a different length per lane for polyrhythms.
• Swing with four groove shapes — Straight, Swing 16th, Shuffle and MPC Style.
• Per-lane Push/Pull timing and Humanize velocity.
• Per-step sound locks — lock one or several sound parameters on any cell, while untouched parameters keep following the lane.
• Sequencer locks per step — probability, stutter up to ×16, ±100 ms nudge, loop conditions with inversion and optional second condition, and per-cell solo.
• Fused cells — join adjacent steps into a longer note that can morph from one sound to another.
• Page tools — follow the playhead, copy/paste/clear pages, shift the whole grid, or loop one page.
• Lane tools — copy or paste a complete lane or only its grid, link a lane's steps to the one above, clear or randomize it.
• Pattern generators — Probabilistic, Markov, Euclidean and Classic algorithms, with 16 musical styles, style mixing, density and variation.
• Quick presets — Rock, Funk, Disco, House, Dub, Drum'n'Bass, Bossa, Afrobeat and Breakbeat kits and grooves.
• 16-pattern bank with copy/paste and a 16-block song mode with repeats.

DAW integration

• Main mix plus 14 stereo aux outputs — route several lanes to the same aux, or keep one in both the main mix and an aux.
• Four choke groups — for hats and any combination of lanes.
• External MIDI input — choose the note of each lane, auto-assign notes, or switch patterns by MIDI.
• MIDI output — Flash Drum emits NoteOn/NoteOff on its configured channel.
• MIDI export and drag — export a MIDI file or drag the current pattern directly into your DAW, preserving fusions, stutters, swing and microtiming.
• 16 MIDI-learnable macros — assign DAW controls or automation to any sound parameter on any lane.
• Presets — instruments, patterns, kits and songs; 4 instrument presets and 18 patterns are included.

Install

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and a VST3 host. Tested in Studio One and REAPER.

1. Download FlashDrum-Setup-<version>.exe from the releases page and run it.
2. Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": the installer is not code-signed yet. Click More info, then Run anyway.
3. Accept the administrator prompt: the plugin goes to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, where every DAW looks for VST3 plugins.
4. Rescan your plugins in your DAW.

To uninstall: Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Flash Drum → Uninstall.

What changed in each version: RELEASE-NOTES.md.

Build from source

Flash Drum is written in Rust with nih-plug and egui. The toolchain is pinned by drum-pattern-vst/rust-toolchain.toml.

cd drum-pattern-vst
cargo test                # unit and integration tests
.\build.ps1               # release build + VST3 bundle in build\drum-pattern-vst.vst3
.\build.ps1 -Install      # same, then installs into the system VST3 folder (close your DAW first)

More details in drum-pattern-vst/README.md.

License

Flash Drum is free software under the GNU General Public License v3. It builds on third-party components listed in THIRD-PARTY.txt; their full license texts are in THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt.