#55

To any Bloom users: Do you feel like the controls allow you to intuitively shape sequences? When you turn knobs, do you get what you expect? Can you avoid “weird” sections?

My experience with Marbles and Tuesday are that I can get interesting sections from them, but the controls don’t actually lend themselves towards any kind of learnable intentionality, which isn’t a criticism of those modules so much as something I’m looking for from a random module.

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#56

haven’t played too in depth with it (been occupied by crow) but it seems like its fairly easy to set each step to which ever note you want in the scale selected. the only tricky part is that i havent figured out how to step through the sequence without it running. Therefore for an 8 step sequence I end up waiting for the whole thing to loop back to the step I’m altering to see how it sounds…I’m sure theres probably a better way, just havent gotten there yet.

#57

Branches and paths create patterns related to the core sequence. They aren’t wholly predictable, but (so far, from what I’ve found), the new patterns sound “right.”

Mutation does its own thing. The results are always surprising. I tend to write in chromatic, so the possibility of off-sounding notes is there.

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#58

So almost a year later, how are people feeling about Bloom?

I read the thread on muffwiggler and a lot of people with very strong opinions against it and quite a few who’ve had issues.

Any more positive experiences here?

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#59

hello,

I really like the Bloom but I also don’t care if it’s tuned exactly right. But I also had problems with it which necessitated an eMail to customer support. And customer support was great! I was provided with a new firmware file and managed to update the unit easily. I think one is supposed to tune the module after updating but I’m not too picky about things like that so now the Bloom is spitting out a “custom scale.”

So those are my woes. But the positives outweigh the negatives. You can cause an awful lot of interesting sequences to appear. The mutate function rules for ever-evolving sequences. The branch and path function make sense in the moment and allow you to expand or contract your sequences on the fly. The other functions work well, too, but I use them less.

My impression of the Haters is that they experienced Confusion over the module’s overall concept and took their confusion as an affront rather than a challenge to be welcomed and overcome.

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#60

I like Bloom a lot and haven’t had any troubles with tuning. The only thing confusing thing is that all non-chromatic scales are tuned to E and this can’t be changed (unless I’m missing something) – the “root” knob does NOT transpose notes chromatically but instead transposes notes while sticking to E major / E minor / etc. This was super confusing until I figured out what it was doing.

That strangeness aside, it’s a whole lot of fun, and once you get used to the way it works it’s an excellent source of controlled randomness. It does an eerily good job of creating musical interpolations from the beginning root pattern you set – you could do a lot of credible theme + variation stuff without anyone knowing you’d done it aleatorically.

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#61

I think it’s a super fun module and a great concept. The issue I have is that you can’t (AFAIK) limit the range of mutated notes, which results in some notes that are really jarring and out of place. You can usually steer away from them pretty quickly but it still bugs. I did have an issue at one point, and will second the fact that their technical support was very responsive and helpful. And a lot of people kind of bash their documentation, but I think it’s more than adequate (I am looking at you, Verbos) :slight_smile:

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#62

Much more positive.

It does sound like it has a few quirks that might be irritating and from a UI perspective like it would really benefit from having a small OLED display. But it does look like a lot of fun.

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#63

more useful than a display (which would definitely help) might be more knobs. although I had fun with my Bloom, writing on it was a nightmare due to the UI. knobs perform too many functions and the sequence needs to be stopped while dialing in notes. I couldn’t imagine trying to dial in a sequence longer than 8 steps.

I ultimately yanked mine from the rack a few months ago.

#64

You can change notes while the sequence is running, although I agree that the note editing is kind of fiddly. One useful thing is that if you have a multi-page sequence (more than 8 steps), you can loop an individual page & tweak the notes on that page while the sequence is running, which makes it less cumbersome to edit long sequences.

#65

I actually love that “root” transposes diatonically. This way you can do chromatic transposition with a precision adder + chromatic pitch offset; if it were the other way around (chromatic transposition internally) then the diatonic approach would necessitate an external quantizer as well!

Going back to @fyoosh’s questions, I haven’t experienced any issues with mine. I love it for creating endless highly usable pitch and modulation sequences that feel anchored but with room for deviation. However I will echo @yobink about notes being jarring sometimes. Like occasionally a mutation will have a note that’s two octaves away from all the others - kind of unmusical haha.

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#66

I’ve been experiencing a love/hate with Bloom. The love comes from my affection for all things generative/robotic when it comes to sequencers but… I concur with many of the posts here and elsewhere that there is a lot of fast fingering needed to change parameters. Marbles is still my go to with both in the rack.

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#67

Well I just ordered one for my palette :grimacing:

I’ll be back with questions next week I’m sure.

#68

OK. I typically learn new things by asking dumb questions. Here’s one. I may not have an ample vocabulary to properly explain this, so cut me some slack.

I am trying to figure out if there’s a way to use the Stillson Hammer mk2 to sequence Chord V2 (in harmonize mode) in any key other than Cmaj/min.

Here’s why: The SH2 expects an oscillator tuned to C. You get to pick your key and scale from there, and the module spits out quantized voltages to do its thing. If you’re just using the “root” output of chords, all is well. Send it a Cmaj or Cmin scale and all is still hunky dory.

But, if we set the SH2 to play in Gmaj, the harmonic relationship between the chords (when using the mix output) is way off.

There may not be a way to make this work. The answer might be “use Kria or play in Cmaj”, which is totally cool. I’d sure like to find a way forward with the SH though. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

#69

Why not just tune the oscillator to G for the zero voltage root? Does the sh2 actually display cmaj for the root no matter what?

#70

This works sonically, but the note names displayed on the SH will be incorrect. Which is not the end of the world.

I think I could maybe get where I want to go with custom scales on the SD card. But honestly that does not sound like a barrel of fun. Probably just better to call a spade a spade.

#71

Sounds like it’s transposing/offsetting the voltage after the quantizer in order to get you to G from C? Not an issue with a regular oscillator, although tracking may be less accurate on some. This would definitely throw off the qubit system as you’re starting on the 5th if that’s the case.

Something like Kria is just ‘the scale’ and there are no attempts to relate it to a named root, so less confusing, I suppose.

#72

I think the answer for me is going to be to use Kria/Meadowphysics with the Chord, and let the hammer whack away on STO and Braids. I appreciate the chat! Happy new year!

And FWIW, I am really in love with both Synapse and Chord V2.

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#73

Beautiful sound as always @mattlowery! I will definitely be keeping an eye on your YT channel. (Part of my discipline for 2021 is no social media, so I’ll miss your IG updates.)

If my ear understood correctly, Synapse was doing something kind of similar to what you can achieve scanning channels on an RxMx–is that approximately correct? Synapse looks really awesome and after reading up on it, I think I realized that I wouldn’t really need both…?

Enough rambling from me. Happy New Year and thanks for sharing more good vibes.

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#74

Thanks so much! Yeah so, basically synapse is a four channel sequential switch that also lets you mix between two sources per channel. The super neat thing about it for routing audio is that the switching is click-free, even when jumping between two very different sources, or even to silence. I really, really like it. And credit where credit is due, @jwm pointed me toward it.

Have not put my paws on one of these, so that very well may be the case.

Cheers and happy new year!

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