#569

those seem like perfectly good reasons, I was just wondering, since it sounds like you don’t have 8 sinks of pitch CV

#570

I must confess to not being super familiar with the 0-Coast so will defer to others :slight_smile: I was sort of thinking of what I would do with the Function portion of it.

The Voltage Block is a little awkward for sequencing pitch but it’s great for sequencing other CV changes. Even though the VB has scales, a fair amount of discussion recommends running a VB channel through an attenuator and then a quantizer to get a more workable range of pitches. Because the sliders cover a full 5V normally, it can be really fiddly to dial in specific pitches with it.

2 Likes
#571

Question: are you looking for sequencing or quantization more?

#572

I guess I’m looking for melodic sequencing, so quantization would be relevant, but I’ve never laid hands an unquantized sequencer so I’m not entirely sure.

#573

I really like the Harvestman/Industrial Music Electronics Stillson Hammer MkII for that style of slider-based step sequencer. It’s 4 channels and 16 steps of both pitch and gates. For each step on each channel you can specify the pitch/voltage (quantized with various scales or not), gate length, repeat time/count, and slide speed. You can easily change the “range” of the sliders for cv, also, so you avoid the problems that @xenus_dad mentioned. Plus it has it’s own clock, plus clock in and out.

My main issue with it is the separation of repeat count/time. I always just wanted something more like what’s in Ansible Kria with ratcheting now, where you just pick the count and it just creates an division of the clock. I guess the SH2’s version is definitely more powerful/flexible, but I want something I can tweak on the fly and always get musical ratchets. The Intellijel Metropolis repeat/ratchet functionality is incredible!

That all said, I started using a Grid + Ansible for sequencing and I haven’t looked back. I think I’m going to put my SH2 up for sale soon. It’s also 32hp, versus the 20hp of the Voltage Block or 6hp of the Ansible. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#574

So what you’re saying is save up for Grids and Ansible?

I really should. Seems like a beautiful and powerful sequencer!

SH2 looks great but it’s so big and so expensive! I’ll do some more thinking about the monome stuff!

#575

Hah… I mean, that’s what works best for me! It just feels more, I don’t know, immediate. It’s harder to know what note I’m going to get while sliding a fader around versus pressing a button that I can easily see what note/interval/whatever it corresponds to. I guess the SH2 does show the note name on the screen when it’s quantized, but I’m more of a visual music maker!

The Monome route definitely saves room in the rack, but it’s not going to save you money! :stuck_out_tongue:

#576

The reason I asked about quantizing vs sequencing is that depending on whether you want to write a specific melody or not, your options can be very different. If you’re ok with notes being constrained to a scale or set of notes but are not as particular at this stage about the specific notes at specific times, then a quantizer can get you really far.

I started with a couple quantizers and am only moving to sequencers now. I agree with @Pacificnorthwes that Grid + Ansible is great here, but obviously pricey. A Beatstep or Keystep might also serve you well at this stage.

I actually wonder, similar to the drum machine discussion up-thread, if there’s an argument to be made for MIDI to CV being a better option. I don’t have a strong opinion. Anyone?

#577

This is interesting to me. Can you give me some examples of how to patch something like that to work multiple voices?

I’m currently using an Electribe 2 as my sequencer, and it’s working pretty nicely so far, but it’s almost too familiar and linear for what I want to do. Plus I want something that will make it so I could perform with just the rack. I’d prefer not to have more cables and power supplies than I need, I know the monome stuff is not quite that, but it’s still a little more mysterious and (seemingly) more open to exploration.

#578

(Full disclosure: I’m about 6-7 months into my own modular adventure, so take me with a grain of salt. I would welcome the opinions of people who’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have. Also, at this point I don’t feel like I’m producing ‘tracks’ with multiple parts, so I may not be the best to speak to this.)

I started with a pair of Mother 32s. In theory the Mother 32 has a decently featured sequencer, but in practice I found them hard to program. I didn’t really start getting good pitched sounds out of my modular until I got an Ornament & Crime, which was early on. Most of my early modular patches were actually feeding my Mother 32s pitch CV that I had generated by feeding the Mother 32s’ LFOs and other modulation to the o_C. I added a Quantimator to that soon after, and later on Marbles.

Having quantizers allowed me to set a scale or similar scales for multiple voices, and let various modulation sources determine what sorts of notes would come out of that. I’ve found you can get really far with that.

There are a lot of ways to focus what a given voice is doing without actually sequencing each actual note. You can use attenuation to restrict the range of values that are feeding into and coming out of your quantizer. You can have all the voices share a common scale, but restrict one voice to only one or two notes of that scale, and another to different notes of the scale. You can obviously shift the octave value of your sound source to be higher or lower. You can use Euclidean rhythms to generate ‘musically interesting’ gate patterns, so that you’re not generating a new note with every beat of your clock, and use clock division/multiplication to put your voices into different time scales. In general, there are a lot of ways to generate patterns that are ‘musically pleasing’ and harmonically in sync with each other without actually composing each note.

I’ve only recently been exploring actual sequencing options. I have a Varigate 8+ and a Voltage Block, which I’m probably going to let go of, though they’re quite powerful. You can get a lot of interesting 8/16/24 note patterns out of a pair of Pressure Points & Brains if you pair them with a quantizer (or not!). In the past couple of weeks I’ve finally acquired Monome hardware and I’m exploring that, and it feels really good, but I still don’t feel like it’s lending itself that well to ‘composing’ in the sense of ‘I write every single note intentionally’.

I don’t personally mind that. When I’ve tried to describe what making music with modular feels like to me, I tell people that playing a piano or a guitar or whatever feels like striking a piece of wood with an axe, and modular feels more like I’m in a wind tunnel with colored smoke blowing past me and I’m shaping my fingers into certain shapes which cause the smoke to swirl in interesting patterns. That’s a little pretentious maybe, but basically, modular to me feels like music that I shape and allow to happen as opposed to music that I play.

So, I would be curious about what you want to accomplish. Not at all in a confrontational way! Just, what sort of musical patterns are you looking to generate with a sequencer? How do you see yourself using the Voltage Block, or another module, to accomplish your musical goals? What are your musical goals?

(Apologies for the ramble, had a few glasses of wine.)

7 Likes
#579

cant recommend keystep highly enough! it’s a familiar form factor, quantized (as long as your oscillator is tuned), actually syncable (unlike the SQ-1), you can make super long sequences, and the rest button makes it easy to make interesting, syncopated sequences. and it’s v v affordable.

the main downside is that it only has one channel. also, editing a sequence on the fly is a major pain in the ass imo. maybe there’ll be a keystep pro sometime soon with multiple channels? also it’s a piece of outboard gear, not sure how important rackability is for you.

#580

This is great. This is the sort of discussion you hope for when you come to an online community!

My goal is to eventually have a three or four voice rack that can be played in an exploratory way. I’d like to be able to control notes in the same way I can control the timbre of the voices by patching and modulating.

I think overall we have very similar goals, I didn’t specifically understand how quantizers worked, but those sound more like what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m not opposed to selecting notes very deliberately, but the concept of using attenuation to restrict notes is very intriguing to me. Then you could open the attenuverters up and give the voice access to more notes in the scale. Is that right? I think that’s the direction I’d like to take.

My interest in the Voltage Block mainly comes as inspiration from ann annie. In one instance it’s a random sequencer, in another it’s a rudimentary keyboard, and it almost always has some modulation going on as well. It seems to be pretty useful and feature rich. Your explanation makes me realized that a quantizer and an LFO are more in line with what I’m looking to do now, but I could still see myself picking up a Voltage Block down the road anyway.

Do you have recordings or pictures of your rack? I’d love to see and hear them!

#581

I actually have a Keystep already. While I do really like it, the single channel of sequencing limits the use I get out of it.

I’d like to work my way up to 100% rackability. The idea of performing with only a 6-7u system is very appealing to me.

I’m coming from the world of guitar, where playing out means bringing a guitar, amp, cabinet, pedalboard, and all the associated cables and power supplies. I’d like something a little more streamlined for my synth setup!

1 Like
#582

This discussion is making me realize that I have been focusing a lot more on gear acquisition and learning modular mechanics than making music. I don’t have many recordings of music, and I should rectify this. I also need to de-GAS some.

I think it’s also telling, in terms of less gear = more music, that the patches I do have to share are from early on, when I had less gear. These are both pretty basic, but I like how they sound.


If I remember correctly, this is Pressure Points/Brains being clocked and pendulum’d by Pam’s New Workout; two channels of PP running to quantizers (I would say a Quantimator because I see the o_C is not in use here and that is what else I had at this stage, but also the Quantimator can only pitch one incoming CV, though it can output 3); and then those sent to the pair of Mother 32s. IIRC correctly Maths or a Sport Modulator is self-patched to increase or decrease the slew of one of the sequences. Then, Rings is tuned to the root note of the sequence, and being excited/played by Ears.

So this one actually is sequenced, in a simple way. I would say don’t overlook Pressure Points/Brains as a potential sequencer, though you’ll only get 3 channels of 8 step or 1 16 + 1 8 step or 1 24 step, if you combine it with a switch, and you would still need a quantizer if you want to dial in pitches to a specific scale.


This is an obviously-made-with-Rings patch. IIRC, the modulation sources here are a function channel of Maths and the two channels of a Sport Modulator. A slow cycle on the Sport Modulator is modulating the speed of the other, faster cycle. A Maths cycle is being fed to the Quantimator as the CV source (I think). End-of-cycle on the Sport Modulator is triggering the Quantimator to grab a new pitch to send to Rings, and also triggering Rings. You can see that in the red trace (Maths cycle) and blue trace (quantized CV derived from the red trace).

I believe that same slow modulation from the Sport Modulator is being fed to Structure and Position on Rings, which is giving it that 1-4-1-5-ish progression and characteristic slide guitar sound. The Rings output is being gently wavefolded, which you can see in the oscilloscope (green is Rings source, yellow is post-wavefolder).

This was basically stumbled upon, and just came from feeding modulation into the quantizer and seeing what happened. I get lots of happy accidents with quantizers.

1 Like
#583

Yes, absolutely. You could do something like this:

  1. Take a 0-5V modulation source. Could be cyclic, random, even audio, depending on what you’re going for.
  2. Run that through an attenuator to ‘squish’ it down to 1V or so.
  3. Run that to a quantizer, and then to your oscillator. Your pitches will span an octave.
  4. Open up the attenuator to roughly 2V, which will spread it across 2 octaves.
  5. Use an offset to shift the octaves up or down (do this before the quantizer, unless you WANT to transpose the quantized notes rather than shifting the notes up or down through the quantizer ‘map’).

You can also get really interesting patterns out of a quantizer by feeding it an LFO or something basically cyclic, and then using a trigger that is almost-but-not-quite in sync with the LFO. That way each trigger into the quantizer falls at a slightly different part of the LFO cycle, which will cause the pattern to ‘move’ along the LFO. Tweak the speed of the LFO that is feeding the quantizer pitch to get the patterns to shift. It’s almost like a musical moiré pattern.

3 Likes
#584

That’s so beautiful and apt!

4 Likes
#585

I love those, especially the one Rings slide one!

Okay, I’m waiting for a bonus from work next month as well as my MN renters refund. I think my two next purchases will be a Batumi and Quantimator. I love LFOs and I’d like to free up channels one and four of Maths for other duties. Batumi seems really useful in that regard.

Quantimator getting CV from Batumi or whatever I happen to plug into it for a given patch, feeding attenuated pitch to Rings and 0-Coast, using whatever to trigger their respective gates. That sounds like a setup that I can get a lot of mileage out of. Especially if I have a slow LFO working the attenuverters (probably channels two and three of Maths) to bring extra notes in and out.

Wow I love modular. The more I learn about it, the more I realize I can get whatever I want out of it! I owe a lot to this forum!

2 Likes
#586

One note here… If you’re describing an LFO controlling the range of an attenuverter, they usually don’t respond to external modulation. You’ll want a VCA for that, or something like Mutable Instruments Blinds, which essentially is an attenuverter with CV control.

#587

Oh cool, I didn’t realize that! I had a VCA on my shortlist, but it looks like it just might have jumped up in priority!

Guess I might need a bigger case sooner than I though :grin:

#588

I know it’s a less popular sentiment here than at that other site, but you can never have too many!