Nord Beat, released today for free from Clavia, is quite a neat app for minimal and functional drum step-sequencing. I've been playing around with it and although it doesn't officialy support Virtual MIDI, it can be used to drive other apps. There is a big caveat here; it does not run in the background. If you have to switch apps at all, it will stop and close out. This is kind of a pain in the ass, but it will remember changes you've made to your sequences, when you return!

To get it working with other apps you need to make sure of two things.

1. The drum app is open to Network MIDI connections.
2. The drum app is listening on the same MIDI channel Node Beat is Sending.

For most apps this is easy, as they are already listening to Channel 10, the default for drum MIDI. I tested it with MoDrum and bleep!BOX, both worked great. For MoDrum you do need to go the extra step for first enabling Network MIDI and then tell it to listen for notes, but once you do the notes come flying in.

Acoustic Bass Drum	35
Bass Drum	36
Side Stick / Rim	37
Acoustic Snare	38
Hand Clap	39
Electric Snare	40
Close Hi-Hat	42
Low Tom	43
Mid Tom (2)	45
Open Hi-Hat	46
Mid Tom	47
High Tom (2)	48
Crash Cymbal	49
High Tom	50
Ride Cymbal	51

The tricky part is finding the right note numbers for all of the drum parts. Most apps use the General MIDI note mapping, so I made this handy chart.

The bold instruments indicate the most common ones. There are some minor conflicts in some apps. MoDrum's synth snare, for instance, is on the accoustic snare number. The chart should help get you going though.

Buy Nord Beat on iTunes: Free