Hope this helps a little. I am not sure how well you know trackers so will give you a detailed breakdown to cover the basics.
First goto the parameters section of Nisp and load a folder of 1 shots drum hits. After that go back to the main program.
There are 2 main pages to Nisp - the ~ key flips between them. 1 page is a blank black screen with command line. The other page is a blank black screen that looks like an excel spreadsheet.
Make sure you are on the page with the excel grid. Move around the grid with the arrow keys.
shift + ctrl start / stop playback
So start the playhead going - default is 16 steps.
There’s 4 tracks columns running left to right. And the sequence runs top to bottom.
Each track step contains 3 cells
Cell 1 is the sample number
Cell 2 is pitch
Cell 3 is for typing code script - a “parameter lock”
So Cell 1 you can play a sample either by hand entering a sample number in the 1st block and / or writing code for that step via the 3rd cell.
Cell 2 is pitch but you can leave blank and it will default to the sample pitch. You can type a number here but you can also use note+octave for pitch, eg c4
Cell 3 can store a script. So goto the top left column, row 1, 3rd cell to the right. Place a cursor on it and press Enter to open text editor. Look as this editor as a parameter lock for that step. This is where you type in some code.
Type this :
(sample (rnd 0 20))
Shift+Enter to save (it’s important to do this or code will not be accepted and you will wonder why your script didn’t work)
Esc to close back to the excel screen.
You will now see a little star * in that block back on the excel page, that indicates it’s got extra code inside.
Every time the playhead passes that block it will randomly play a sample from 0 to 20.
That little star of code you can now copy/paste to any of the 4 tracks in the excel screen.
ctrl + c / v copy / paste
So you have an editor per step but you also have another editor - global master editor called “repl”. It’s a blank black page with a command line.
To get to the global editor.
~ open / close repl
Open repl
Change the global tempo type :
(bpm 80)
(bpm 220)
Change the pattern length from default 16 to 4 steps. Max of 100 steps - 0 - 99.
Patterns start at 0 not 1, so the length will be 3.
(length 3)
If you ever see the playheads running out of sync with the other channels
type :
(sync)
From this live coding “repl” window you can do lots of global things like save and load patterns, mute tracks etc
If you want to mute tracks you can also do it via a short cut
shift + 1
this will mute track 1
Also remember samples start at 0 not 1.
If you want to make some polyrhythms, set each track length to different numbers using row one, cell 3 script of each track
Eg in Track 1, Row 1, Cell 3 - press enter, type :
(length 3)
Shift +Enter
Esc
Eg in Track 2, Row 1, Cell 3 - press enter, type :
(length 5)
Shift +Enter
Esc
If you want a random sequence length from 0 to 4.
(length (rnd 0 4))
With a random bpm from 80 to 200
(bpm (rnd 80 200))
and play a random note each time
(note (rnd 20 80))
All this can go together in the same script / per step.
Check the other parameters for messing with samples like scrubbing longer samples by randomly changing the start time with a step length of 1 :
(length 1)
(pos (rnd 1 99))
or playing with the filter resonance. Once you start copying and pasting these script sequences around the excel sheet it can get quite complex. Especially if you start using the combinations of logic / math commands and start calling saved patterns from cells.
Hope that helps
