Change Ringing

[josephsomer]

Change Ringing

A sequencer app for max and grid based on historic bell-ringing practice.

Mathematical Impressions: Change Ringing

Inspired by posts from @infovore, @mzero, and others, I’ve put together an implementation of change ringing for monome grid and max. It outputs MIDI, so could be used to play drums, samples, etc…

Hopefully the video / wikipedia pages give you an idea of what to expect from this. A sequence is played (e.g. 8 bells in descending order of pitch) then a set of rules are applied (e.g., bell 1 and 2 swap places) which change the order of notes in the sequence.

This is the first thing I’ve written in Javascript (in fact in any programming language that isn’t max/graphical) so please be gentle! if you have bugs (or it doesn’t work at all) let me know and I will try to troubleshoot. If anyone has time to give feedback on the code, I’d be really grateful!

Feel free to remix/reuse as you see fit. If it makes its way into any music please let me know!

Requirements

1. Max
2. grid (128 varibright only currently!)

Documentation

(note, I’m describing this as if the grid is in ‘portrait’ orientation, so ‘rows’ are 8 keys across and ‘columns’ are 16 keys down)

Playback

1. Press the ‘play’ toggle in max.
2. You should see the playhead make its way across a row, before moving to the next row.
3. You should be hearing a moody arpeggio. Open the midiout patcher to change the notes.

Gestures

• Add a rule: press and hold a key to start a rule. Press a second key on the same row to add it to the rule. When you release the keys, the rule will be stored. Rules must contain ≥2 keys. To show the rule is stored, the keys will light up (the first key pressed is the brightest, and later keys get dimmer).

• Delete a rule: press a key in a previous rule, or create a new rule that overlaps it.

• Resize gesture: hold one key, and press a second that is >4 rows away. You will enter resize mode, where you can change the loop start and end points of the rows and columns. You should see the first and last row and column lit dimly. Press a corner to ‘pick up’ that corner, then press elsewhere to put it down. To exit resize mode, press anything other than a corner.

What are ‘rules’?

When the playhead moves to a new row, the order of the sequence will be swapped around according to the rules in that row. E.g., if a row contains a rule with keys 2 + 3, when the sequencer reaches that row, the 3rd note will move to 2nd place, and vice versa.

Complexity

• You can have multiple rules in a row.
• Unlike traditional change ringing, you can have multiple keys in a rule. These will ‘rotate around’ a circular queue, according to the order they were pressed. Concretely, the last will move to the first position, the first to the second, the second to the third, etc. (e.g. 2 3 4 → 4 2 3).
• Rules can contain non-adjacent keys (e.g. 2 5 → 5 2)
• Rules can contain keys in any numerical order, or any combination of the above (e.g. 2 7 5 4 → 4 5 2 7).

Future

MIDI input - to set pitches, sync to clock, etc.
Norns port (once I get one).

Download

change-ringing-01.zip (4.7 KB)

[infovore]

that JS file download isn’t working for me, possibly a Discourse error; might want to try attaching a zipfile?

Otherwise - very cool, looking forward to trying this…

[josephsomer]

zipped up! working now?

[infovore]

yep, looks like it’s working now! Will try it out with a grid in due course…

[veils]

I haven’t tried this out just yet, but discovered it after introduced to this recording, which purports to be the posthumous release by a musician who transcribed traditional change ringing methods to sequencers for performance on modular synths. I’m skeptical that this origin story is true. But it’s fun to listen to: Bellectronic (1980-1984) | Meurig Elis Huws | Strategic Tape Reserve