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Each of Tattoo's 12 sounds comes with appropriate editing parameters.

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The launch of Tattoo, Audio Damage's first software instrument, follows a year or so that's seen the company release a steady stream of altogether more sensible plug-ins. At one time, it was the purveyor of mad-as-a-March-hare concepts that did strange, wild and wonderful things to innocent signals.

But growing up is a part of life and, more recently, AD has ably tackled studio staples like reverb and compression with Eos and Rough Rider Pro. Now we have Tattoo, which is a synthesising drum machine with step sequencing thrown in.

Overview

Tattoo offers up 12 synthesised drum sounds, and all the usual suspects are included: kick, two snares, three toms, closed and open hi-hat, cymbal, rimshot, clap and cowbell. Each has a variety of appropriate editing parameters - for instance, the kick has everything from Saturation and Envelope to Tune and Clock Level, while the clap has just Tone and Reverb (not actually reverb per se, but a decaying noise to give the illusion of such). Some sounds have two envelope controls for manipulating, say, the volume and pitch independently.

We spent a lot of time playing with the synthesis parameters on offer, and they are very well set up. They really reward experimentation and you don't often find yourself hankering for more control than is on offer. Naturally, this doesn't afford the broadest sound palette in the world, but that's not the idea.

This plug-in harks back to a simpler time, when entire beats were constructed on one machine – an 80s approach that has seen a huge resurgence in almost every strata of current pop music.

Sequencing

Sequencing is handled by a programming grid with up to 32 steps – you simply click on the blocks to pencil in where you'd like each drum hit to fall. You can sync it to your sequencer in a number of ways and the timing is rock solid.

Tattoo's step sequencer isn't just about programming beats, though, as demonstrated by the Selected Beats and Random Beats sliders. The former affects your programmed beats: at the default maximum setting, all hits are played, but reduce it and some beats will be skipped at random.

Random Beats adds hits at random, and you can set the grid so that they only appear on, say, quarter-notes, eighth-note triplets and so on. Note that both of these settings are per drum, rather than being applied to the entire pattern.

We'd hesitate to use this feature live, but it's certainly great for creating ideas and variations, whether by using keen ears to recreate some of the tastiest results, or by simply bouncing a long section and using the highlights.

Simpler rhythm randomisation can be had with the Rand button - press it and the pattern for the selected instrument is scrambled. As for the patterns themselves, Tattoo can have up to 16 loaded at a time, which should be plenty for most users (and you can always use multiple instances if it isn't).

Finally, the Step Size setting does exactly what it says on the tin, offering pattern lengths in a variety of step-lengths and relative Step-Value settings, including 1/32, 2x1/16, 1/16T, 1/16 and 1/8T.