I have Expert Sleepers FH-2. It’s great, really configurable.

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I own a Yarns and I use it in a few different ways depending on what i want to do

  • if i want to use the digitakt’s midi tracks to sequence a voice on the modular, I set it to 1 or 2-voice mode and use the digi as the master

  • if i just want to sync tempo and use the digitakt as 8 tracks of samples/drums/voices, I use Yarns as the master clock

Hi all!
Want to share with you my first patch with newly purchased Marbles. Already in love with this module!
It’s a simple composition based on randomness, delays and a little bit of field recording.
Better to listen with headphones. More explanations below the video on YT.
Happy summer to ya all!

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Does anyone have any interesting ways of using a sequencer with Marbles?

I’m about to buy a Digitone/Mutant brain and I wanted to clock Marbles with one of the channels while sending different CV values to the bias per clock step.

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The pattern record mode is pretty interesting. You can feed it a sequence and then it will behave as if it came up with that pattern on its own. So you can keep your locked in sequence or listen for more new notes you send it, or push it past noon and let it start doing it random reset thing, effectively jamming on your sequence. Definitely worth exploring if you haven’t yet!

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external sampling is the probably the thing Ive enjoyed most with Marbles…
esp, when you start playing with Deja Vu, either to jumble it up, or let through a few more new notes that you’re playing on the sequencer.

how are you dealing with clocking when doing this?
Im trying two routes…
a) use X clock, based off the gates off the sequencer - so the sequencer controls when new notes are captured.
b) using the Y (so main clock) thats just constantly ticking along, and just picks up from the sequencer when needed.

its a lot of fun either way…

the other thing I’ll be trying at the weekend, is use the sequencer to record sequences as scales (using scale recording) - this should be fun too I believe.

overall really loving marbles, it’s a great way to get controlled randomness into patches.

(only yesterday accidentally discovered the alternative T modes, one of which I really like!)

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i’m having trouble understanding how to use Marbles’ quantized scales (factory, or ones i play into it)

out of the factory the scales are rooted in C - that means, I should tune my oscillators to C so that tracks correctly, yes?

And according to the manual, if I input a new scale that’s… say, D-major… would i then tune my oscillators to D?? Would that affect the scale and the way v/oct is outputted?

or is the module… always measuring volt per octave rooted in C so that 0 volts is a “C” for an oscillator tuned correctly??

It’s probably best to think of your oscillator tuning as transposition of whatever is coming out of Marbles.

The “scales” are really a set of probabilities of particular intervals within an octave. The factory C major scale has the frequencies of C major, weighted more toward the root, then to the fifth.

If I understand it correctly, if you record a D major scale into it with the same weighting, it would result in the same data transposed by two semitones. So if you also transposed your VCO up by two semitones you’d be in E major.

The easy thing to do would be to set Steps fully CW so it’s always generating the same pitch class at different octaves, tune your VCO as desired, then back off on Steps.

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that’s helpful, thank you! I’ll start with tuning to C then see where it takes me :bowing_woman:

it’ll track correctly regardless of what your oscillator is tuned to. If you take, say, the Marbles major scale setting, feed it into a an oscillator set up with its root - ie, the pitch with no voltage added - at say, an E flat… it’ll spit out major scales on E flat.

That is: the Marbles factory scales all start from a lowest note of 0V, and then go up from there (ie, repeating every whole volt, because a volt is an octave). If you sum that voltage with whatever the internal CV of the oscillator is (ie, the position of the coarse + fine tune knobs)… it’ll add the right intervals to the root note, and you get a scale.

Add that output to B half-flat… yup, you’ll get a B half-flat major scale, and so on.

Really, the key thing is that the unpatched oscillator is at what you consider the root of the scale you’d like it to play in is. Then, quantise to that scale. A scale is just an array of intervals.

There is no ‘correct’ or assumed tuning across modular; tune your oscillators root (with no input) to whatever you want, and voltages applied to a V/Oct input will correctly offset them.

I am aware this is not always as intuitive as I tend to think it is.

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(unless your oscillator is Mangrove, in which case you should tune with 0V or a dummy cable plugged in!)

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I’ve definitely found myself wanting to run with length 4 on one channel and 5 on another channel. The closest I can come up with isn’t quite right – running Marbles at length 5, and setting up a Teletype script as a sort of 4-note shift register with the Param knob setting the probability of capturing a new value. I’ve done something similar with the Sputnik 5-Step, but of course the 5-Step doesn’t have any chance of randomizing new notes into its stream.

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I think most of your feature request can be done by augmenting marbles with extra modules.

You are on the right track with saying logic modules and OC could help. OC can be a 4 channel quantizer with different notes selected per channel. In addition some of those features could be done by sending x1, 2 or 3 through a gate processor like the alt mode on peaks of the numeric repetior.

I’m gonna reinforce this idea, especially for gates (tho some of the suggestions for individual X channel outputs are tasty and maybe not beyond a firmware hack?).

I really have good vibes running my Marbles with Timerunner, Batumi and Branches (the latter may seem excessive but this is eurorack) as a big nest of cross patching. i don’t help myself by having Maths and Cold Mac next door.

Depending on the week either Marbles or Timerunner are the “master clock” and I get div/mult from how they interact, with additional clocked modulations from Batumi (“individual wavebank” firmware giving me some stepped random outs to nudge Marbles, squares to nudge Timerunner). No it’s not as neat as Marbles having more diverse options for the T outs, but Marbles is doing plenty in this arrangement.

I similarly find myself wanting Marbles + a little extra. My current performance setup is using two channels of Marbles to drive Rene - basically using Rene as either a step-addressible sequencer or a fancy 2-channel quantizer - and for the most part it’s working really well, but it’s a lot of HP. But I also get frustrated not being able to set trigger bias separately per channel, deja-vu/length per channel, etc.

One option I’ve considered is to get a MI Branches to further attenuate gates, which would help me get more negative space with both channels running; but with the Rene, I don’t really have room for it in my rack.

What I’m working on now is a Norns script that is basically four turing machines, organized as two channels, with clock divide/length/trig bias/deja vu per channel - which turned out to be really straightforward - but the real win will be if I can get a decent quantizer too, and get rid of Rene entirely. I would have a really hard time taking Marbles out of my rack though, I’ve if I’ve “replaced” it.

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definitely the first thing I thought when Bloom was announced.

I forgot to mention that Telephone Game is also really fun with Marbles!

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I use Teletype & Marbles all the time. I’m kind of wondering how Stochastic Inspiration Generator will fit in. It doesn’t have any CV inputs, but it would make a great scale programmer for Marbles, among other things…

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the general lesson here is that pretty much any module is better with a friend or two

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Has anyone played much with the hidden “t” modes? If you hold the mode button down for a few seconds you get an alternate mode for each.

The second orange mode is really fun but it seems like the response of the bias knob is laggy/unpredictable.

Second green mode is also super useful.

Second red mode is hard for me to tell the difference. Maybe if I was using it for drums it would be easier to tell what’s happening.

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Oh dang. I hadn’t seen SIG before. That’s quite a module. :sweat_smile:

You’re dead on, though. That would be an excellent way to “teach” Marbles.

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