#106

Hey thanks for the reply!

I can delete all the notes by just restarting a recording on the current pattern is that what you mean? With undo I was more hoping it was just for the last note :stuck_out_tongue: yeh but overdub might be a workaround

currently when it is externally clocked, every sequenced note will playback at the same length am I correct? all sequenced in 1/16th notes based on the clock speed. Would be really great to have “rests” in between the 1/16th notes, or essentially tying two 1/16th notes becoming a 1/8th note or tying three 1/16th notes making it into a 3/16th note and so on…

Also currently the half / double speed don’t seem to be working/

#107

I am fairly sure that all notes are not the same length. It plays it back just as you play it.

#108

but if I have clock in it all becomes the same

#109

not everyone have the chops to play perfectly in time :stuck_out_tongue:

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#110

I can understand :slight_smile:

Still, I am not sure what programming single notes/ties/rests would look like in Earthsea. It doesn’t seem designed that way. Kria is very good at it though!

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#111

really? I couldn’t find this info in the menu. can you explain? thanks

#112

you listed both as separate options, so to clarify: deleting all patterns notes already happens when you start a new recording. once overdub function is implemented you will have a choice of whether to start a brand new recording or to overdub an existing one. in overdub mode you will be able to add/remove notes and then commit the change without stopping, so you could add a note and then commit it at which point it becomes part of the pattern, or you could abandon whatever you changed since the last commit.

basically: record a pattern, enter overdub mode. play some notes on top (or remove some notes). if you happy with it you can commit, and continue the process. anything that hasn’t been committed yet can be undone. hope this makes sense.

are you using it with external clock? speed runes only work on original timing, so will have no effect when clocked externally.

a pattern is a collection of timed note events essentially. when not clocked externally it will play a pattern using the original timing. with external clock the internal timing is completely ignored, and it just steps through the note events whenever a trigger arrives (and remember, ext clock can be irregular too). say you recorded 2 notes, A / F that don’t overlap. if you clock externally on the first clock impulse it will play note A (the gate will go high), on the next clock impulse it will stop note A (the gate goes low), the next trigger will play note B, and the next one will stop it. the only exception to this is chords - if 2 or more note events are closer to each other than 30ms it will assume they are part of a chord and will play them together.

i still think earthsea strength is not being within a clocked context (other than the whole pattern being restarted on each bar or something like that). it can be used that way but it’s not really all that supported in earthsea - that includes programming it in the way you describe, or having time quantization options (or resizing patterns based on external clock intervals). those options could be added, but i think that would dilute what earthsea is good at. perhaps the proper solution to this is instead adding an option to enter notes by playing them live to white whale / kria, and then you have all the advantages of a more traditional step sequencer.

i’m curious to hear what others think of this.

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#113

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Yes I understand what you mean. As a new user I have no idea of how earthsea should be used (probably because I haven’t explored the capabilities deep enough). Just curious, what do you think the strength of Earthsea is? Maybe its good to start new ideas, but implementing it into another idea without some kind of quantisation will just create a mess… IMO .I agree with what ioflow mentioned earlier in the thread regarding the concept of having 4 independent voices similar to the analog 4, i feel with these phasing rhythmic ideas is what makes interesting melodic ideas. Sometimes its not just about the note but also about the rhythm.

I really think having the capability of editing note (with an external clock) length duration and rests or even quantitization would allow more musical results because as I’ve mentioned, sometimes you hear melodies in your head and you might not be able to play it out exactly … (yes more like a traditional step sequencer.) but at the same time the monome grid interface itself is what makes it really interesting plus the mobility & ease of use.

I don’t think Kria would be the same, as with earthsea you have the guitar fretboard style layout where you can hear notes as you play it. Kria is also restricted by the scale with just 1 octave… At the end of the day everyone makes music differently and I think IF its not very difficult to implement then why not just add these features :stuck_out_tongue: Would be grateful if you can consider !

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#114

I’ve been away. Missed this at the initial discussions. Fantastic work @scanner_darkly! Many thanks. Now… what will I do with my two Earthseas?

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#115

OG Earthsea still has shapes going for it! :slight_smile:

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#116

being able to capture a live performance easily and then play it / apply different transformations to it while keeping its feel. there are many step sequencers in eurorack but not many that do what earthsea does (cv recorders could be considered as having a somewhat similar function but since they don’t have the context of individual notes they can’t do some transformations that earthsea is capable of).

the existing linearize function could be considered a very simple form of quantization but it doesn’t do anything beyond that, say you can’t quantize to a grid (which is how time quantization usually works). adding something like that would be complicated - do you treat external clock as a bar with 16 steps or something else? same for your pattern length, does it contain a 16 note sequence that you want to quantize? if not, how do you specify? so this means potentially complicating the user interface - something that has to be considered very carefully, and to me it always goes back to asking a question, what is it designed to do? what is a purpose of it as an instrument? does a new feature strengthen that instrument, or distracts from it?

step by step note editing is another thing earthsea doesn’t do. i did consider adding a screen that would represent a pattern somehow (with scrolling) but abandoned the idea, it just feels like turning earthsea into a different kind of sequencer where you’re just using its ability to record a live performance. that’s why i say - why not just add this ability to actual step based sequencers such as white whale? (i have to correct myself here - white whale does have live recording mode! only for triggers though, for CV you do it with the knob. perhaps somebody could add an earthsea style recording to ww).

look at that wall of text, i might be grossly overthinking this! i do hear you on being able to capture a melody quickly and then turn it into a proper sequence. overdub as i’m planning it will include the ability to erase notes, so one way to edit timing will be erasing a note and then re-recording it, but i’ll see if there is a good way to also be able to shift notes. step editing though likely not, sorry!

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#117

buy 2 more and then you have a 4 voice earthsea? :slight_smile:
on a serious note, yeah, aearthsea will not have shapes or portamento.

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#118

Agree that transforming an idea into something different or creating some kind of surprise is what makes it interesting. The idea of using technology to create music.

No i don’t think we have to think in terms of how many steps there are, I love the idea of not having restricted length in Earthsea, it can be 2 notes or 100 notes. The grid would still be the same and the UI don’t have to change at all. All we need is a way to set clock speed for individual notes (when a external clock is present). Say during recording you press a note with your left hand and decide this note should be a little bit longer or shorter then the previous note , with your right hand you can key in half / double speed for this specific note. This could be situated at the far right column on the grid. Essentially implementing a clock divider or multiplier within Earthsea. That been said I wouldn’t know how complex it would be to program this, but seeing it already has clock manipulation double / half speed it shouldn’t be very difficult.

so its less of an technical issue? I totally understand that you are looking at it as a concept and staying true to its design, but my argument is it doesn’t have to be any different then what it is (UI wise), implementing these features will open doors for more varieties of idea creation. We can still use it as how it was designed but have the flexibility to use it as a different tool.

#119

i see, so you mean just being able to adjust speed relative to external clock? doable, but i’m afraid this will go to “implement later if at all” pile… the main reason being - this can be done with an external clock div/mult module, and need to draw a line somewhere so i can get back to teletype firmware (this was supposed to be a quick port!).

for editing do you mean adjusting notes or timing? step sequencing wouldn’t allow you to change variable timing (which is why i was imagining it as some scrollable UI which would present both the pitch and the timing info).

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#120

I was referring to adjusting individual notes for variable timing… so looks like its not possible :sunny: thanks for your inputs though, still super excited to see this happening!

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#121

yeah, i can’t think of a way to do this without creating a dedicated UI.

however: i do plan on adding teletype support which will allow you to read and edit individual notes (basically, an op to get the total sequence length and an op to get or set individual note properties. kinda like treating aearthsea sequence as a pattern bank).

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#122

how about empty note or rest when external clk is present? meaning to create an empty event / trigger somehow?

#123

you would need to be able to enter them somehow (which goes back to the above discussion on step sequencing) or analyze the note sequence and decide on when to have a rest based on some criteria. you could do something like this:

say, you record note A for 2 second, 2 second pause, note B for 3 seconds, 1 second pause, note C for 6 seconds, 2 second pause:

AA__BBB_CCCCCC__

now you clock it externally. we could infer some timing information from the first note. so any pause that is equal or longer than note A will become a rest:

A_BC_

this could be one way, but i’m not sure it will work well for all scenarios.

edit: thinking about it more, it might actually work reasonably well this way. so then the length of the first note would be used to determine ties/rests. linearization would work similar way (or maybe have the new option in addition to how it works right now). i’ll give it a try.

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#124

Starting to make some headway on the docs.

Here’s an early draft of what I hope will turn into a printable (or PDF-able) quick reference card. I’ll probably slice this up as well for the markdown docs. Early days.

All comments welcome.

(note that I don’t use Adobe Illustrator, so I quickly copied @laborcamp 's excellent original images and did a bit of quick cutting and pasting to match. can be done better later, once I have all the bits is place and correct)

%C3%86arthsea
Æarthsea.png3300×3300 573 KB

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The UX of grid-based applications
#125

more than happy to help with prose for Ansible documentation - the grid modes are a bit less fullsomely described than the Arc modes in general.

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