qqquaint

[Quru]

qqquaint

playable multi-tuning quantizer for Norns, Crow and Grid

- YouTube

qqquaint is a quantizer that was designed for maximum playability with Grid. It started as a simple exercise for microtonal quantization, but got a bit out of hand. It’s inspired by eurorack quantizers with piano keyboard style note selection, MTM Turing Machine, and the 5-step sequencer of Buchla Music Easel. qqquaint features custom scales up to 24 intervals long, and user scales can be added to the code. Further instructions are on GitHub readme.
qqquaint also features two interval outputs in addition to root output, 10-step trigger generator, and 10-step looping for past cv values. Quantized notes can be transposed, octave can be switched, and there’s drift which adds slight randomization to output voltages.

Ideas for future development:
Grid page with playable keyboard
More robust Turing machine-like internal random source
Bolting on a Supercollider engine for Norns-internal sound

Requirements

Norns and Crow (required), Grid (optional, but strongly recommended)

Documentation

ReadMe on GitHub: ReadMe on GitHub: qqquaint/README.md at main · TommiQQ/qqquaint · GitHub

Crow input [1] takes clock, Crow input [2] takes incoming cv, Crow outputs [1-3] output quantized voltages, Crow output [4] outputs triggers. On Norns E1 changes parameter selection, E2 & E3 change parameters, K1 resets transpose, octave and drift.

Grid controls:

Please note, that this is my first “serious” Norns script and I’m no programmer, nor musical theorist. I’d be glad to hear of any bugs or development ideas, and if you have a favourite tuning/scale you’d want to be added to qqquaint I’d be glad to do it. I have no equipment nor knowledge to fully test out if the tuning system actually works hertz by hertz how it should, the main thing was to make it fun to play and sound good to my ears and that I think I have achieved.

Download

v0.5 - https://github.com/TommiQQ/qqquaint/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
GitHub - TommiQQ/qqquaint: Multi-tuning playable quantizer for Monome Norns, Crow and Grid
On Maiden: ;install https://github.com/TommiQQ/qqquaint

[steveflato]

Can’t wait to try this! Thank you!

[cloverandgrape]

Ohh, I think this will be fun with a 0-ctrl plugged into Crow. I’m going to try it out later, thanks!!

[Quru]

0-CTRL was kind of my main reason to start making this. I don’t know if it’s wonky electrics, only my unit or what, but my 0-CTRL doesn’t output pure 0V on fully counterclockwise so I put input hysteresis-parameter on EDIT-menu so you can dial in a slight voltage threshold for 0V. Another thing, for some reason when I took both clock and pitch cv from 0-CTRL on slower stream speeds (also found in EDIT-menu parameters) the pitch was always coming one step late. The default values are set up so that on my unit it worked as it should, but might be worth looking into if qqquaint acts weird with your 0-CTRL.

[keinexco]

This is super impressive for a first script. I’m inspired!
The demo is really great, too. The scale you are using near the end (just before introducing drift) is gorgeous and weird. Looking forward to playing with this~~~

[steveflato]

This is WONDERFUL. Thank you so much. Question: I see 24 EDO and 24 TET in the scales list. Aren’t these the same thing? Would love to see 17 EDO, 19 EDO, and more JI scales.

[cloverandgrape]

Thanks! I had to play around with these params a but but once it’s going it’s super fun. Thanks!

[Quru]

Nice that you’re enjoying it! Truth to be told, I have scavenged these scales/tunings (still not even sure which to call them) from weird 90’s esque alternative tuning web pages, Xenharmonic wiki and scanning through some books and I have no theoretical background in any of this so I can’t really say anything for sure. 24TET and 24EDO might as well be the exactly same thing, but the difference here is that my 24EDO is based on these ratios 24edo - Xenharmonic Wiki and the 24TET is based on crudely splitting 12TET in half. It results in a slightly different frequencies for the notes, and I have no idea which is more correct. This is kind of remnant of my original vision which was that the user would be able to give the script few parameters, including freely assignable number of intervals in an octave, and it would create custom microtonal scales, and the way to do it on 12TET based scales was just brute force it into smaller pieces. It proved a bit too difficult for me to implement for other than equal tempered scales so I changed the approach to hard-coded tunings, but that 24TET was left behind.

I will definitely put more scales in, definitely more JI too, when I have the time. I didn’t want to open with too many of one type so that it didn’t seem too much like “oh this is a JI script” or “oh this is a script with a lot of weird EDO scales” but to seem more open ended.