faeng
faeng is a sequencer. inspired by kria. powered by timber. connect a grid and take wing.
My brother pointed out to me the other day that my live music was lacking in drums and bass.
Since drums and bass combine to form a genre I quite like, I was chagrined;
indeed, my modular rack, while capable of many things,
struggles to produce a rhythm section along with a lead.
Faeng represents an attempt to remedy that for myself; I hope you might enjoy it too.
(“Why do you do synths the hard way?” asks my brother)
Faeng gives timber wings to soar alongside its inspiration, kria.
Many thanks to @markeats for timber,
@tehn and everyone who has contributed to kria,
@Galapagoose and @tyleretters for sequins and lattice,
and to all of you for being part of such an inspiring community.
Now is the time for me (and you!) to use faeng,
to find bugs and figure out what it wants to be.
Requirements
norns with timber installed.
grid.
Documentation
Plug in a grid.
To load a sample
(into the active track’s bank)
press K3 on the landing page;
K1+E1 scrolls the active sample; there are 7 per track.
To change the active track,
press one of the lighted buttons on row 6 of the grid,
or press the 3rd or 4th key on the bottom row.
Sixteen tracks.
To change the displayed page,
press one of the next seven buttons
(note to kria afficionados, no “alt” pages—yet).
The pages are
Triggers,
Sample
Note,
Octave,
Velocity,
Ratchet
and Pattern.
Each track is both like a drummer: one arm or leg can make multiple sounds
as selected by the Sample page sequence,
but only one at a time, so triggers for the same track will “cut” each other,
and like a bassist: each sound can be repitched by the Note and Octave sequences
to play a mean melody.
Unlike kria, on the Triggers page, only the active track is visible.
Try it: press some grid keys in row 2 and hear your samples played back.
more Directions
Velocity is maybe what you expect,
but Ratchet has some fun in store:
pressing above the current maximum ratchet value will turn on new “bits”
which can be turned on and off individually;
turn off the last bit to reset the behavior of the step.
There are three mods:
Loop,
Division
and Probability,
which correspond to the final group of three on the nav bar.
Each changes the interaction and will flash while active,
and can be deactivated by pressing the same button again.
Loop allows you to move and resize a track’s loop
(like kria, each of faeng’s pages has an individual loop length).
To move, press a key to move the start of the row to that x-coordinate.
To resize, press the left and right ends of the new loop at the same time—
but release the right side first;
releasing the left side first will set the loop length to one.
Division shows the clock divider for the current track’s selected page.
The default division is 16th notes,
and in general setting the division row to coordinate x will result in a division of x/16.
(Like kria, each page for each track has its own division.)
Probability shows the likelihood that a given step will update the behavior of the track.
Each page for each track has its own set of probabilities.
Faeng is powered by sequins.
Hold a step for a second and two things will happen:
the grid UI will change,
and the track page button will begin to dance.
You’ve entered SubSequins mode.
On the triggers page, the SubSequins row is row 6,
while on other pages, the SubSequins UI takes up the full page.
Resize the SubSequins by using the same gesture as the Loop mod,
then enter data.
Each time the step you originally selected is reached,
its SubSequins will advance, multiplying the variations one track can create.
To leave SubSequins mode, press the flashing Track button.
You’ll see that the step you created a SubSequins for
will dance to show you the values you entered—
the dancing may not line up perfectly with what you hear.
Finally, a word about the Pattern page.
Initially, pressing a pattern will (eventually) switch to it;
press and hold to copy the current pattern to it.
Inspired by kria’s Metasequencer,
faeng has a sequence of up to 16 patterns,
each with its own length,
set by row 6.
Unlike kria, faeng’s patterns are per track.
Unlock the pattern sequence by using the Loop mod to extend row 4.
Change the division for row 6 by using the Division mod.
Add even more variation by trying the Probability mod.
With a step selected, press a pattern to store it as that step’s data.
Don’t be alarmed:
the other page views follow the currently active pattern as set by the Metasequencer,
so the view may change over time.
Install
;install https://github.com/ryleelyman/faeng
v0.2.1 github link
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