16 Lanes & Drag-and-Drop Import

Classic sampler workflow: create an instrument, map a zone, assign a root key, set a velocity range. And wait, why is the kick playing on F#3? All you wanted was your sample in the thing, triggering on a grid.

TrapMan's unit of organization is the lane, and loading one is exactly the gesture you'd hope: drag the file, drop it, sequence. Here's how lanes work, from the five you start with to the sixteen you can grow into.

What a lane is

A lane is one sample plus everything that sample needs: its own row of steps on the step grid, its own piano roll, its own sample editor, its own mute and solo (the button marked "S"). One sample per lane: no zones, no layers to configure, no mapping. The lane is the sound, and the grid reads like a track sheet: kick, snare, hats, 808, top to bottom.

A fresh instance opens with five slots waiting (kick, snare, hat, 808 and one spare is the obvious cast) and you add lanes as the beat wants them, up to 16 in a session. That's room for the main kit plus alternates: three snare candidates side by side, two hat sounds, the 808 and its layer, all resident and sequenceable at once.

Importing samples

Drag files from Finder, Explorer or your DAW's browser and drop them on lanes. TrapMan takes the formats your sample folder is actually made of:

• WAV (.wav)
• AIFF (.aif / .aiff)
• MP3 (.mp3)
• FLAC (.flac)

No conversion step, no import dialog. And sorting starts the moment the files land: the on-device classifier files each sample as a kick, snare, hat or 808 in the background (AI sample sorting), so a big multi-file drop arrives organized instead of as a pile.

From empty to sequencing, in five steps

1. Drag a sample onto a lane. It's loaded and playable: that's the whole import.
2. Punch in steps on the lane's row and the sound is in the groove immediately.
3. Drop more samples on more lanes as the beat grows: each new sound is one drag away, up to 16.
4. Swap without ceremony: drop a different sample onto an existing lane to replace the sound and keep the pattern. Audition five snares against the same groove in under a minute.
5. Cut what isn't working: right-click the lane and choose Clear lane to empty it, sample and all. Lanes themselves stay put on purpose, so your per-lane automation in the DAW never gets scrambled by a renumbering.

Lanes on your MIDI keyboard

Every lane has a trigger note, starting at C1 and walking upward, so your kit is playable from a keyboard or pads, finger-drum style, not just from the grid. The octave below C1 is reserved for pattern keyswitches, which is why nothing collides: C0–B0 steers the song, C1 and up plays the drums.

Tips

• 16 is a ceiling, not a target. Most beats that knock are six to ten lanes. Use the headroom for options (three snare candidates side by side), then clear the losers.
• Solo pairs, not soloists. Solo the kick and 808 lanes together with "S" to check the low end locks; mute the hats to hear whether the skeleton still bounces.
• Clean as you import. A quick pass in the sample editor (trim to the transient, pitch to key) right when a sample lands beats fixing timing mysteries later.