A monophonic quantized sequencer. With 1v/oct, gate, retrigger & velocity outputs. 64 patterns with up to 16 measures per pattern, up to 16 beats per measure and up to 16 divisions per beat. EOP will trigger when the last note in the pattern has been triggered. Patterns always loop (currently).
- Left click a cell to activate that note.
- Right click an active note to cause it to retrigger.
- Hold down shift then drag a note up & down to alter the velocity, when dragging, press ctrl for more fine-grained control.
- Use the panel on the right to alter the current pattern and its make-up.
- Send a pulse to clock-in to advance each step (no internal clock).
- Send a pulse to reset to prepare to play the current pattern from the start (plays 1st note on receiving first clock).
- Click the area above the notes to set the play position. Triggers the notes at that position. You can drag across.
- CV input for pattern selection is based on 1V/oct pitch information. Send C4 for first pattern, C#4 for second, D4 for third, etc.
- Click the area below the notes to switch the current measure.
- Hold down a measure for 1 second to lock that measure. Playing will now loop around that measure only.
- Hold down in the measure area for 1 second to unlock measures again.
The following inputs are generally for clock synchronisation: clk, reset, run.
Note that the run input will toggle the run state whenever it receives a trigger - it doesn't actually know if the clock is running or not.
The module defaults to the "Running" state. If your clock is paused when you hook it up, you will need to manually click the "Running" indicator to switch it into "Paused" mode so that it matches the clock.
When the module is "Paused", clk inputs are ignored.
Driving a piano roll's ptrn from the 1v/oct output of another piano roll is one way to program a pattern sequence. If you plug the eop output from the driven piano roll into the clk input of the driving piano roll, when the pattern finishes playing, the driving piano roll steps to the next step and selects the next pattern in the driven piano roll.
This leads to a startup issue - you need to have the driving module choose the first step of the pattern immediately. If you wait for eop, then you're playing whatever pattern was previously selected in the piano roll until it finishes and then it selects the first module.
To address this, use Driver Mode on the pattern sequencer, by choosing it in the right click menu. This will ensure that the first step is selected as soon as the run or reset signals are received.
Note also how the reset and run signals have been chained through the driver module, this avoids timing issues even when the clk input is direct in this way. No clock delays are necessary when setup this way.
- Patterns and measures can be copied and pasted within the same module (not between modules).
- All notes in the current pattern can be deleted, letting you start fresh.
- You choose how many notes to show, from 1 to 5 octaves. (actually shows 1 extra note so you can more easily see which octaves are involved).
- The clock input can be delayed by a few samples if you have timing issues with switching patterns.
Despite my best efforts it can still be hard to synchronise piano rolls correctly, especially when changing patterns.
The crux of the issue is this: If your piano roll is playing the last note of pattern, the next clk trigger will roll it around to play the first note of the pattern again. If the ptrn signal changes after that - well you've already played that note. The pattern will change but whatever piano roll does, it would sound wrong. If it changed to the correct pitch of the new pattern you'd get a "blip". As it is, it keeps playing the wrong note.
The underlying cause is if your ptrn signal route is longer than your clk route, the ptrn signal will arrive after the clk. You can accomodate for this with Piano Roll in the right click menu by choosing Clock Delay and the number of samples you wish to delay by. You can choose up to 10 here. If your delay is >10 samples you probably need to address the chain to synchronise the signal changes better somehow.
Be aware of modules that add slew limiting. They don't always advertise this fact. Slew limiting has the effect of making clock signals appear delayed as they ramp up and down over time, rather than immediately. This is good for de-clicking audio, bad for synchronising signals. VCV's SS-1 and SS-2 modules have slew limiters in them, meaning that if you're trying to use them as clock dividers, you may hit synchronisation issues that are larger than the tuning features of piano roll can accomodate.
You can record pitch information from a source (eg, midi input) by connecting the 1v/oct, gate, rtrg and vel sources to the inputs on the right hand side (rtrg and vel inputs are optional for this).
If you send a trigger to the rec input, the module will go into "Prerecord" mode. Once the play position wraps around to the first position in the pattern (or measure, if you've locked the current measure), then recording will start.
Send a second trigger to the rec input to cancel recording or the prerecord mode.
Once the end of the pattern has been reached, the module will automatically drop out of recording mode and start playing what has been recorded.
Remember your clock input can be any source, and each received trigger moves forward one division, use a manual trigger source for more fine gained control over what you're recording.
When your inputs are set up, their values are mirrored to the outputs so that you can hear what you're playing. The mirrored outputs are not quantised - they are just pass throughs.
The recording inputs can have other uses. For example, you could have a blank pattern in your song and use the inputs to improvise that section of the song using the same instrument that was being sequenced by the other patterns.
Piano Rolls can be chained together for chords or other effects. The inputs on the left (clk, reset, ptrn, run, rec) are mirrored to the outputs below.
Sync is a simplified and shrunk version of SEQ Adapter (see below).
Any incoming reset triggers are held until the next clk input unless the current clk input is high, in which case the reset is played immediately.
This should do a better job of keeping sequencers in sync with resets even while running.
Sometimes it's necessary to ensure that only one of the clk or reset outputs is high at the same time (for example, when driving an SS-1 or SS-2 module). To enable this, enable the No CLK on Reset option in the right click menu.
This module fixes the behaviour of some sequencers that skip or fail to sound the first step of their sequence when their clock is started after a reset.
Simple sequencers (like SEQ-3) normally skip the first step in their sequence when you stop the clock, reset, then start the clock again. This can fail to sound the first step and possibly put the sequencer out of sync with other modules in the patch.
The SEQ Adapter takes the run, reset and clock outputs from the clock module. It then creates its own reset and clock outputs which are used by the simple sequencers. These are timed in such a way that the first steps are sounded by the sequencers and they are kept in sync with the rest of the patch.
The SEQ Adapter works by detecting when a reset has been triggered when the clock isn't running. When that happens, instead of forwarding the reset signal, it arms the module. When armed, the next clock signal received gets duplicated to the reset output. This has the effect that when you start the clock, the module is reset to the start of the sequence with the clock active. For most modules, this means that we start playing on the first step. SEQ-3 in this case will output the first gate. Hora drum sequencer will play the first drum step, etc.
This does rely on the sequencers handling simultaneous reset and clock inputs correctly, so your mileage may still vary.
Resetting while the patch is running should work exactly as it does now - the reset and clock inputs are simply duplicated to the outputs.
With Impromptu's Clocked module, it actually works slighly better if the Outputs reset high when not running option is turned off. This will ensure that SEQ-3 will sound its gate, whereas it might sometimes miss it if this option is turned on (it's on by default).
Based on the GVerb GPL'd reverb code.
This is a dirty, messy and unstable reverb. Makes for some interesting, if not repeatable effects. The reset button is there because it often gets itself into a state that just needs you to stop everything and start again. Reset only resets the engine, it doesn't reset any of the knob values.
GVerb is a mono in, stereo out reverb. I'm emulating stereo in by running 2 engines and mixing the output. The Spread feature cannot be modified without recreating the engine, so it's fixed to 90 degrees and uses mixing to simulate a spread effect.
The output is normalised using an internal envelope following, because the output gets crazy high voltages otherwise. This follower can generate its own effects at times when things are out of hand.
Removed in v2
A reskinned version of the Core Audio 16 interface. Included solely for backward compatibility with pre v1.0 patches.
A basic audio ducking module. Works in either stereo or mono mode. Audio in the "over" channels are prioritised above the "under" channel. The amount of priority and the recovery rate once the "over" channel goes silent are configurable.