TrapMan User Manual

TrapMan is a drum sampler and sequencer built for trap and hip-hop production. One window holds your sample lanes, a step grid, a linked piano roll, a sample editor, a pattern arranger and drag-and-drop export into your DAW. This manual covers every feature, top to bottom.

01Activation & trial

TrapMan loads as an instrument in your DAW — AU and VST3 on macOS 13+ (Apple Silicon and Intel), VST3 on Windows. Until a licence is active the plugin shows the licence screen and stays silent.

• Enter your key (TRPM-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) and hit Activate.
• No key yet? Get free trial starts a 7-day trial — one machine per trial, two machines per paid licence.
• Once activated, TrapMan keeps working offline. Moving to a new computer? Preferences → About → Revoke licence for this computer, then activate on the new machine.

02Interface tour

The window (resizable, default 1160 × 550) splits into six zones:

1. Top bar — library toggle, preferences, Master Tune, pattern length & grid, pattern selector, Slow / Slap, MIDI OUT / AUDIO OUT.
2. Library — a slide-in browser on the left.
3. Lane panel — one row per sample: name, color, mute/solo, volume, pan, meter.
4. Pattern grid — the step sequencer, aligned with the lanes.
5. Bottom panel — the Piano Roll or the Pattern Chain (tabs on the right; clicking the active tab collapses the panel).
6. Zoom bars — drag the ends to zoom, the middle to scroll.

Every divider between zones is draggable. Almost everything is undoable with ⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z, and the spacebar always drives your DAW's transport, never the plugin.

03The top bar

Knob gestures everywhere: drag vertically to set, ⌘-drag for fine control, right-click / ⌥-click / double-click to reset. Ctrl + scroll steps through the GRID and CUT menus without opening them.

04Lanes

Each lane holds one sample (WAV, AIF/AIFF, MP3, FLAC) — up to 16 lanes per project.

• Color chip = mute toggle. S = solo. Click the name to preview the sample.
• Volume fader (−∞ to +6 dB) with built-in meter and a clip light — click the light to clear it. Pan knob with a center detent. ⌥-click either to reset; with several lanes selected, both move as a group.
• Reorder by dragging a row; hold ⌥ to duplicate instead (⌘D works too — the copy carries the sample, settings and notes in every pattern).
• Load samples by dropping files on a lane (replaces its sample) or below the lanes (creates new ones), by double-clicking in the Library, or via right-click → Load Sample….
• Fills — numpad 1–6 on the selected lane write instant patterns: every step, every 2/4/8 steps, a 2-&-4 backbeat, or every half bar.
• A red name means the file went missing — click it to relocate, or right-click → Locate All Missing to fix every lane from one folder scan. Saved projects embed a copy of each sample, so recent projects keep playing regardless.

05Library & Smart Folders

Add your sample folders with + Folder (or drop them straight into the drawer). One click previews a sound — the preview runs through the active Slow/Slap chain, so you hear it in context. Double-click loads it into the selected lane.

• Search filters as you type across every folder.
• Favorites (right-click) plus a star filter in the header.
• Colors tag folders and files for quick scanning.

Smart Folders classify your whole library automatically — filename analysis first, then a neural network on the audio itself — into 12 categories: 808s, Bass, Kicks, Snares, Claps, Closed Hats, Open Hats & Cymbals, Percs, Rim Shots, Loops, Melodic, FX. Opening one lists its sounds in random order — built for digging. Re-run the analysis anytime with Preferences → Library → Rescan Library.

06Sample editor

Right-click a lane → Edit Sample…. The waveform shows the sound exactly as it will play; drag the triangular handles for fade-in/out, pinch to zoom, click to preview, or drop a new file on it to swap the sample.

Toggles: Mono (a new hit cuts the previous one — default, the classic 808 / hat behavior), One-Shot (sample rings out regardless of note length; turn off to gate it to the note), Envelope, Normalize. ⌥-click any knob to reset it.

07Pattern grid

• Click an empty cell to add a step; keep dragging to paint. Right-click erases the same way — fast passes never skip cells.
• ⌘-drag up/down on a step sets its velocity (⇧ for fine). ⌥-click resets it to 100.
• ⇧-click / ⇧-drag selects; drag a selected step to move everything; hold ⌥ to drop a copy. ⌘A selects the pattern.
• ⌘C / ⌘V copy & paste — while stopped, click the ruler to place the paste cursor. ⌘R replicates the selection right after itself and grows the pattern automatically (1 → 2 → 4 → 8 → 16 bars) when it overflows.
• ⌥U splits every event in the pattern at the current grid.

08Piano roll

The piano roll edits the selected lane melodically; other lanes show as gray ghosts. Notes snap softly — within 8 px of a grid line they lock on, otherwise they land free. Hold ⌘ while dragging for fully free placement, drag a note's edge to resize, and use the left keyboard to audition pitches.

• Velocity lane (the VELOCITY button): draw absolute values with no selection, or drag a selection to offset it while keeping its shape. ⌥-click resets to 100.
• Hat rolls: select notes, ⌘U subdivides them at the CUT resolution. ⌘⇧U does the same but walks each slice down a semitone — an instant descending roll.
• 808 slides: select a note and press S. A slide note re-attacks the sample but its pitch glides in from the previous note — glide time is the note's own length. Slides need the lane's Mono mode (on by default).
• Transpose / nudge: ↑↓ semitone, ⇧↑⇧↓ octave, ←→ grid step, ⇧←⇧→ a bar.
• The number row sets the piano-roll grid on the fly; ⌥ + scroll zooms vertically, ⌥⌘ + scroll horizontally.

09Patterns

A project holds up to 24 patterns, each with its own length, color, name — and its own Slow state. Click the pattern selector for the list: click to switch, drag the grip to reorder, trash to delete, right-click to recolor. Right-click the selector itself for New, Rename (emoji supported 🔥), Color and Duplicate. The gray EMPTY pattern is a ready-made silence — handy as a breakdown block in the chain.

10Pattern Chain

The chain turns patterns into an arrangement that follows your DAW's timeline. As soon as it holds one block, the chain drives playback: bar 1 of the song is bar 1 of the chain, and past its end TrapMan goes silent. Empty chain = the current pattern loops.

• Press P to push the current pattern onto the chain, drag the pattern name from the top bar into it, or use the + button.
• Click a block's title to swap its pattern; drag to reorder; ⌥-drag to copy; drag the right edge to resize (⇧ for quarter-bar precision) — a block longer than its pattern loops it.
• ⌘ + right-click is the split tool; double-click names a section (Intro, Hook…).
• Blocks cut sample tails cleanly at their boundaries, so an 808 never bleeds into the next section.

11Slow, Slap & Master Tune

Slow is the chopped-&-screwed switch: tempo-synced half-speed playback, one octave down. It's per pattern — flip it on your drop pattern only. The rate menu (1/16 → 4 bars) sets the slice length: short = tight stutter, long = big slowed waves. The % knob blends dry/wet.

Slap glues the bus with one knob: a compressor tuned for drums (its detector ignores everything under 120 Hz, so 808 subs never pump it) into soft saturation and a clipper. Push the % until it knocks.

Master Tune (±12 st) retunes the entire kit at once. All three — plus each lane's volume, pan, mute and solo — are automatable from the DAW.

12Playback & DAW sync

• TrapMan follows the host transport — tempo, position, loop. There is no internal play button.
• Hit play on any bar and the pattern starts on its own beat 1; loops wrap sample-accurately, with no flam on the downbeat.
• Return restarts the pattern from the top without touching the DAW transport — perfect for re-cueing while you jam.
• On stop, ringing one-shots (808 tails, cymbals) decay naturally.

13MIDI in & import

Play the kit: incoming MIDI triggers lanes chromatically from C1 — lane 1 = C1, lane 2 = C♯1, and so on (change the octave in Preferences → MIDI). The incoming note picks the lane; each pad plays its sample as tuned in the editor.

Import: drop a .mid file onto a lane row to replace that lane's notes in the current pattern — pitches and velocities preserved, pattern length grows automatically. One ⌘Z undoes it.

14Export

Select lanes, then drag a badge from the top bar into your DAW:

• MIDI OUT — one .mid per selected lane (current pattern, real pitches and velocities, tempo embedded), numbered to keep lane order.
• AUDIO OUT — renders the current pattern with Slow, Slap and Master Tune baked in, as 24-bit WAV. Click the badge to pick Single File (everything summed) or Multiple Files (one stem per lane).

The audio render stops exactly at the pattern's end — bump LENGTH up one size if your 808 tail needs room. Muted lanes are skipped; use the lane selection (not solo) to choose what gets exported.

15Multi-out

TrapMan exposes 16 stereo outputs (Main + Out 1–15). Enable them in your DAW, then right-click a lane → Set Output — or flip Route All Lanes Incrementally to spread every lane onto its own output in one click. Lanes aimed at an output the DAW hasn't enabled fall back to Main, so nothing goes missing.

16Keyboard shortcuts

macOS shown; on Windows use Ctrl for ⌘ and Alt for ⌥. The full list also lives in Preferences → Guide.

17Specs