Anatomy: tinted voice bands fill rows 2–15; row 1 (bottom) is the 4/4 beat guide; row 16 (top) is the page strip.
TŒRN has no screen besides the 16×16 RGB grid — the same surface you tap notes onto is also the display. This chapter teaches you to read every row, lane, and helper before you place a single note.
The grid is a two-dimensional score. The X axis (columns 1…16) is musical time: column 1 sounds first, column 16 last. The Y axis (rows 1…16) is voices stacked from bottom to top — row 2 is voice 1, row 3 is voice 2, and so on. Two rows are reserved as helper strips: row 1 at the very bottom and row 16 at the very top.
(x, y) using 1-based coordinates and y=1 at the bottom. Wherever this handbook says "row 1" it means the lowest visible row of LEDs, and "row 16" the highest.Anatomy: tinted voice bands fill rows 2–15; row 1 (bottom) is the 4/4 beat guide; row 16 (top) is the page strip.
In default Draw mode the lowest row is not a voice lane. It shows a quiet 4/4 orientation bar: dim markers on steps 1, 5, 9, and 13 so you can spot beat one and each downbeat while you edit. No notes can be placed here — painting starts on row 2.
With the cursor on row 16, row 1 instead paints encoder-hint glyphs so you know which knob is armed for page-wide tools — see Pages+More.
Further information. Move the cursor onto row 1 and the strip becomes a control surface: encoder 2 long press opens the mute overlay (see that chapter); when input monitoring is enabled, encoder 1 rides live input gain and a short press cycles monitor level — the beat markers change tint to match.
The top row of the matrix carries the page strip: one LED per pattern page (a song holds up to 16 pages). But row 16 has a second job that is just as important: it is where every "operate on the whole pattern" tool lives. The same gesture that paints a single note on a voice row turns into a page-wide action when your cursor sits on row 16.
y==16):
Page strip colours, summarised.
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Bright yellow-white | Audible and edit page (you are watching what's playing). |
| Green | Audible page; you are editing a different one. |
| Yellow | Edit page only (playback is elsewhere or stopped). |
| Dark blue | Other page that already contains notes. |
| Very dark red | Empty page (no notes recorded yet). |
| Dim red (full strip) | Loop mode active and that slot is beyond the loop end. |
Fourteen rows in the middle hold the sixteen voices. Because the grid is square, two of the voices share visual space with the page / hint strips — there is no row "dedicated" to voices 16 and 1 in the display sense; the firmware re-uses the strips when you scroll the cursor onto them.
Each voice has its own permanent colour; you will recognise rows by hue at a glance. The mapping below is the firmware default (palette 0):
Sample slots 1–8 read audio from the SD card (see Samples). Voices 9, 10, and 12 are intentionally empty — no sound engine is wired to those rows; you may still move the cursor there, but notes placed on them do nothing. Voice 11 is a three-voice polyphonic synth with ten instrument presets; voices 13 and 14 are independent mono synths with their own LFO and arpeggiator.
For the actual sound chain (oscillators → envelope → filter → effects), see Sound design.
Two things move on the grid during playback — don't confuse them:
(current_x, current_y) set by encoders 4 (column) and 1 (row). You can disguise it (under SETTINGS → CRSR) as a thin cross, a channel-readout dot, or a big block.When playback is stopped, only the cursor moves. When playback is running, the red playhead marches across the page while the cursor stays wherever you left it.
The matrix swaps role completely between modes. The four core sequencing views are explained in Sequencing:
Menu mode overlays the whole matrix with text and submenu dots; you are still "in" your music — just not drawing on it. The Menu map covers every screen.