So I took advantage of the fact that the skeleton library does have support for arc. I’d like to introduce Orca, a polyrhythmic probabilistic cv and trigger generator / melody generator / arpeggiator. It’s an alternative firmware for the white whale module that works with a varibright arc.
Here is how it works:
It generates two 1V/Oct and 4 triggers.
There are 4 rings that represent 4 sequencers, all moving at different divisions of the main clock.
There are 16 different division presets (a preset determines division values for all of the 4 rings) which can be selected by the encoder #2.
No matter what the divisions are they do not get reset every 64 steps, they will continue with the same division. So you will see it redrawing its path as it goes.
Every time the cursor crosses a boundary a trigger is generated on the corresponding output.
Encoder #1 controls phase which goes from 0 to 32. The phase is multiplied by 2 and 3 for the rings 3 and 4 (basically, ring 1 - no shift, ring 2 - shifted by phase, ring 3 - shifted by phase2, ring 4 - shifted by phase3)
Encoder #3 controls chance - at the maximum only approximately half of the triggers will make it through.
There are 2 CV outputs - each one outputs a quantized 1V/Oct CV in the scale set by the param knob.
How CV is determined is a bit convoluted.
Each ring represents a bit in a 4 bit number. If the cursor is in the active zone the bit is 1. This number represents index within the currently selected scale’s 16 note array.
CV A is affected by the chance parameter, CV B isn’t.
Encoder #4 selects mixer preset. Mixer preset determines which voltage bits are used to determine CV A and CV B. Different combinations will produce 2 melody lines that will compliment each other in different ways.
It can get pretty interesting if you hook up 2 oscillators that are tuned to each other (you can see/hear it in the demo). Every encoder can completely change the pattern.
When you change any parameters the current value will be displayed for a few moments.
Currently selected scale is also shown on the encoder 1. You can see it in the video where the knob sits right on the border and there is some jitter due to the noise on the input, so it keeps displaying scale (and it sounds strange in places although maybe in a good way)
Hold the front panel button to save all current encoder values - they will be restored the next time it’s powered on. I might be forgetting a couple of things though, will add more later (and a proper video/documentation).
wish I had an arc4 to try it (arc2 owner). although, this very much gets me pushed into having another look at the firmware… and it already inspired some ideas I’m about to prototype in node. thanks for sharing!
Would be good to know exactly what the draw is.
I am definitely going to pursue this further, just somewhat apprehensive about adding another power brick to the setup.
Although, I suppose, I could be toggling interfaces used switching between arc and gridas needed…
power: in this set up i’m just using 4ms row power 40 which provides enough juice (I assumed arc would draw similarly to grid or less) but yeah i absolutely made sure it wouldn’t be underpowered. for my other case i still use ext5v, but really wanted this case to be as portable as possible so replaced uzeus with row power 40. i don’t think it would provide enough to power a grid and an arc at the same time though, so if i planned to do that i’d add Switch or ext5v.
yep, the first 2 encoders control phase and divisions.
thinking about it some more though - with arc2 it will only use 2 rings to select which notes get played, so the output will be less varied, but there is no reason it shouldn’t use all 4 rings even with arc2, the other 2 rings will be just “virtual” so to say. i’ll fix that.
