Beat Studio 1.7.0: Refreshed, Expanded, Reorganised

Three things in this release: a full visual refresh to a cooler, darker tone; a batch of new features, mostly around notation, tempo and playback feedback; and a reorganisation of older features that had ended up scattered — settings above all.

This also feels like the point where the app leaves beta behind. Development carries on as usual — there’s plenty still to come — but things have settled enough that “beta” no longer seems like the right label. If you missed the last big one, 1.6.0-BETA brought variable tempo.

Look and feel

Full theme refresh to a cooler tone across the whole application.
General style and layout polish throughout.
New overlaid display option for audio waves.

The refreshed dark theme: timeline lanes for kick, snare and toms with hit markers, a blue Mix waveform below, and the mixer strip with transport controls, a green 96 BPM display, reverb and delay knobs, and per-channel pan and sensitivity controls.

Notation and timeline

Triplet support is much better, end to end — from pattern creation through notation rendering and import.

The notation view now shows a tempo mark (♩ = 120) above the first bar, and it follows the BPM control as you change it. Toggle it under Settings → Notation.

A bar of drum notation in 4/4 with a tempo mark of quarter note equals 120, hi-hat eighth notes on top, and an eighth-note triplet on the snare in the last beat.

Click anywhere in the score to set a custom playback start position or a loop. It’s shared with the timeline’s start and loop markers, so switching views keeps your practice section.

A bar of drum notation with a green highlighted loop region between a green Start marker and a red Stop marker.

Your hits are now colour-coded against the pattern right in the notation, the same feedback you already get on the timeline.

Two bars of drum notation: the first bar's notes are coloured green where they were played correctly, and the second bar, highlighted as the current position, shows black notes still to be played.

Hit streak information is shown on both the timeline and the notation. It can be turned on or off in Settings.

The timeline with a streak badge in the top-left corner reading ×64, best 64, above a row of green hi-hat hits.

All timeline and notation settings have moved into the Settings dialog, with a quick link from the main UI.

The top-right corner of the notation view with zoom buttons, a Settings button and a Full Screen button.

The notation view now warns when a pattern contains hits that can’t be engraved accurately — off-grid, overlapping, or wrapping hits — with ‹ › buttons that step through each affected note.

A blue warning bar above the score for "Rollin'" by Limp Bizkit saying 406 hits fall between notation positions and 2 overlapping hits are hidden, with previous and next arrows; the affected notes in the first bar are circled in blue.

Full screen

Full-screen mode gained transport controls — Play, Pause and Stop, plus a BPM selector — and the timeline now uses all the available vertical space. A keyboard shortcut (Tab by default) toggles full screen on and off.

Full-screen timeline filling the window, with a streak badge of ×33, hit markers on the hi-hat, kick and snare lanes, and a floating transport bar at the bottom with play, pause, stop and a 119 BPM control.

You can also have the app go full screen automatically when playback starts.

The "Go full screen" setting switched on, with the note: the trainer fills the window while you play; leave with the Full screen shortcut.

Patterns and editing

The pattern edit dialog is fully refreshed, with a new Show/hide details toggle. The song intensity map has been removed.

The refreshed pattern editor for Smooth Operator by Sade: a grid of hi-hat, kick and snare hits above a waveform, and below it cover art, pattern name, artist, pack and audio file fields, timing settings for time signature, notes, pickup, swing and BPM, and a Hide details button.

URL imports now show a one-time consent dialog covering the use of yt-dlp and your responsibility for the content you download.

The "Using yt-dlp" dialog explaining that Beat Studio uses the free, open-source yt-dlp tool for URL imports, that you are responsible for complying with the terms of the services you download from, and a checkbox to confirm you will only download content you own or have permission to use.

Tempo and metronome

The metronome has more settings, with an independent click pattern for every time signature.

The Metronome Settings dialog with sound options (Mute, Bell and sidestick, Bell, Sidestick, Click), count-in options (Off, 1 bar, 2 bars), and a click pattern editor for 6/8 in eighth notes where each beat's bar height sets how loud it clicks.

The BPM automation dialog is fully refreshed.

The Automatic tempo training dialog set to Loop-based mode, raising the tempo from 120 to 170 BPM in steps of 5 every 4 loops.

The main BPM buttons are reworked: the large buttons now step ±10 and the small ones ±1. The display no longer shows fractional digits.

The BPM control showing 120 on a green LED display, with large plus and minus buttons and small up and down arrows.

Settings and shortcuts

The Settings dialog is fully refreshed, with new settings throughout. The main functions now have configurable keyboard shortcuts — and you can bind keys to drum pads too.

The Device and input page of the new Settings dialog, with drum module selection, latency compensation set to Auto, and a keyboard shortcuts list: Space for play and pause, Esc for stop, Tab for full screen, and keys for tempo up and down by 1 and by 10.

Diagnostics and maintenance

Log level selector in Settings, plus a button that opens the log folder for troubleshooting.
Clear cached data.
Clear orphaned backing tracks.

The Advanced page of Settings with a Log detail dropdown set to Warnings, an Open log folder button, a Clear caches button showing 104 MB on disk, and a yt-dlp Check for update button.

Performance and fixes

Playback performance optimisations.
Fixed saving a pattern’s top score.
Fixed a number of playback issues.

That’s 1.7.0. Download links are in separate posts on Patreon.