Sequencer for Subtle Music

[mthruwtsn]

When I talk of phrasing it is about the ability to add in moments of silence (milliseconds sometimes), often across a whole piece. This seems difficult…

[LLK]

What strikes me though is, aren’t you trying to use tools that are not meant for it at all, to acheive things that are just performance oriented and not programming oriented ? It seems like what you call “subtle music” is just human’s imperfection and/or perfection through humans playing instruments. You’ll never get “that” from a sequencer it’s not what it’s built to acheive, you can probably get very interesting results by trying to get there and failing (to me electronic music is about trying to breath some human flesh into the machine and sort of failing to do it, and human performed music is about trying to reach some sort of perfection and sort of failing to do it). But I mean, Satie’s music is very well written, and can be performed in various ways, it can even be performed in a very mechanical and “unsubtle” way and I’m sure you could still make it work that way, but if what you’re after is the human feel of an interpreter playing it, maybe step sequencers are not what you’re after. Spending a lot of time to add milliseconds of silence in step sequenced based machines seems like a weird thing to do since the beauty of these sidestepped milliseconds is often to be found in the ingenuity and spontaneity of the interpreter.

I don’t know maybe I’m completely mistaken but I have a hard time figuring out what exactly it is you’re after ! Sorry, doesn’t mean to come out as disrespectful.

Also there’s a lot of subtle music made with X0X sequencers it’s probably not the best word. (But putting words on musical ideas is very tough I think)

[baleen]

i don’t think there is a single “sequencer module” that will resolve this for you, but i do think a “sequencer” can do (within a reasonable tolerance) what you are looking to do, it just needs help.

yes, software will give you a better interface and many more levels of control over “subtlety.”

but you also mentioned timing as a component of this subtlety and there are many many options for timing in eurorack separate from pitch/cv sequencing. let’s say you have a single trig/gate source running your satie-ish sequence - attenuated modulation of this sources timing will get you to that “breathing.” combining gate sources will get you there too. skipping steps or shuffling the sequence will get you some
life too.

maybe “post yr rack” and what modules have you been considering!

[maztik8r]

If you’re in the eurorack world, getting in millisecond pauses could be as simple as having a way to briefly pause your clock source.

My favorite sequencing tool at the moment is Orca. It’s a whole other rabbit hole that you might not want to spend the time and effort to go down, but there are myriad ways in it to achieve the sort of thing that you’re looking to do. Then again if you spent all the time and money learning and trying out all those hardware sequencers that you mentioned then a free tool like Orca might not be a big deal to dive into.

[slowsounds]

It seems like what you call “subtle music” is just human’s imperfection and/or perfection through humans playing instruments. You’ll never get “that” from a sequencer it’s not what it’s built to acheive, you can probably get very interesting results by trying to get there and failing (to me electronic music is about trying to breath some human flesh into the machine and sort of failing to do it, and human performed music is about trying to reach some sort of perfection and sort of failing to do it). But I mean, Satie’s music is very well written, and can be performed in various ways, it can even be performed in a very mechanical and “unsubtle” way and I’m sure you could still make it work that way, but if what you’re after is the human feel of an interpreter playing it, maybe step sequencers are not what you’re after.

I’d second this idea. If you take Satie and play it back as a MIDI file or if it is played on a music box it is probably going to lack all of the emotion and gesture that you feel your own sequenced music is too, and all the swing in the world on a sequencer won’t fix it. Also unless something new has come out I’m unaware of I have the general impression that if you can’t get the Cirklon to do something, no hardware sequencer is gonna do it. The only possible workaround I could think which will mean lots more work entering your sequences would be to double your clock speed and the length of your input, since it would give you a higher resolution where you could enter the shortest rests possible here and there to simulate the effect you are after, and I imagine it would have an effect on how things like ties/slides come through.

[synthetivv]

if what you’re after is the human feel of an interpreter playing it, maybe step sequencers are not what you’re after.

I largely agree, but you can also easily reach a middle ground by using a touch-responsive controller to step manually through a predefined sequence of notes. I’ve gotten a whole lot of mileage out of using Pressure Points in this way: wiring the overall pressure output through slew generators to VCA and/or VCF, and the gate outputs directly to sequencer clock input(s). It’s a great way to imbue “expression” into a sequence without exactly playing the notes by hand.

[Ithacus]

Something you can record in live and then playback would do the trick I guess; maybe the Hermod sequencer?

Or maybe even an Electribe or Elektron box that spits out Midi (not familiar with the Elektron way of working though so I may be a mile off).

I can totally understand wanting to avoid the computer/DAW based approach (there is a lot to be said for the immediacy of hardware).

[germinal]

For delicate melodic writing, I really like step sequencers that let you specify a duration per-step, rather than a constant pulse with rest/note triggers.

The intellijel Metropolis is the most prominent eurorack example of this style, but it only does 8-step patterns which is enough for riffs, but not great for melodic work. There’s several Buchla sequencers that can do this - the 248 and the 250 I think, but I’m not a Buchla user.

A newer module you could also look at is the Frap Tools Usta - which seems like a Buchla 250 clone in euro to me, but I haven’t gone super deep into its capabilities or workflow.

That said, it sounds like you might be past working on hardware - my oblique take would be that something like Orca, or even a tracker-style UI for detail-oriented work, might be worth considering if standard notation and piano-roll UI isn’t doing it for you.

What I’m using for this now is my OP-Z - sequences have a max of 16 steps, but you can set duration per-step, and have different step lengths and overall resolution on each track, with lots of ways to add variation and randomness.

[marcus_fischer]

Octatrack is pretty wonderful for sequencing. You can do micro-timing, random elements and polyrhythms.

[J.Fleury]

maybe the way to go is ditch the midi grid and work in freely assignable time Intervalls. I‘ve had great fun composing small melodies with looping envelopes and 6 OP FM on the Yamaha SY77. Since there is no way to sync those EGs you‘re forced to do everything by ear, which leads to quite different results than classic grid style sequencing. In eurorack there is the Control Forge if you’re looking for precision and a lot of loopable EGs for more gestural composing. A dc-coupled sampler could also be used as an unconventional Sequencer of sorts.

[rmro]

I’ve had good results using Numerology…it’s deep.

[tayholliday]

FWIW, long melodic lines is what I have in mind for this sequencer design: Sequencer design for grid.

Some hardware sequencers can do anything theoretically, but their UIs are too modal, requiring a high cognitive load. A piano roll on a computer is lower cognitive load, but I don’t think it suits itself to live experimentation because it produces a lot of invalid in-between states when editing.

[mthruwtsn]

Hi there everyone, thanks for getting back to me on this. Really great suggestions and tbh they are all things I have tried. You see I guess I am looking for something too special to be possible in this day and age of music making products. I want to be able to recording keyboard performances of any length and edit them if needed, I want to be able to program with Electron style per-step sequencing, with the power of a Cirklon in terms of instrument numbers. Working both on or off the grid and in the end having some sequences being more like performances or musical parts on a score which I can use in musical contexts alongside standard clip/pattern type gestures and sequences. The answer thus far has been Ableton…but I would like something midi only without all the audio stuff which I don’t use and with some kind of hardware connection to be able to physically interact with the music.

[smbols]

You could always just learn to play a keyboard the way you like and then record the MIDI from it. It’ll take a while, but probably not as long as waiting for someone to design you a silver bullet sequencer.

[mthruwtsn]

Hey there yeah I have been in contact with Frap about the USTA quite a lot, because I think it looks amazing! Had a long chat to them about Rubato, fingers crossed on that one:)

[ht73]

I’m afraid this is a phenomenon that the more you try to get on top of (by simulating it), the more it will recede… this very “getting on top” is what chases it away.

Satie, Dane Rudhyar and Terry Jennings composed in a traditional manner – the human performer was in the loop in a traditional way. But Eno and Hiroshi Yoshimura achieved the much the same things with electronic tools and methods that were partially if not completely generative…

In search of commonalities, what I hear most is … attending to negative space, making silence and the environmental space around you a partner…

In Satie we find the ‘pause’. But the pause is not the phenomenon, it’s already a technical interpretation – precisely that which covers up the phenomenon or chases it away. What then is the phenomenon of the pause? The pause is rather that which frees the space so the ‘figure’ can resonate within it.

The silent space does not ‘ground’ the figure; it only bears it in its groundlessness.

‘Grounding’ and ‘bearing’ are opposites: the soil bears the tree, but does not ground it.

If the tree had to be grounded in the sense of “set upon logical foundations” it would be uprooted; that is, it would already cease to be as a tree.

Such is why the calculative approach in which we ponder the effect of this or that ‘timing variation’ or ‘accent’ only leads astray.

The thinking that is needed such that the space be freed for its groundlessness is rather of a meditative kind. In this the ‘pause’ is grasped more essentially.

Furthermore, the negation inherent in terms such as ‘negative space’ and ‘groundlessness’ indicates also that something has been missed or is inexpressible in language; to be understood it must be given a purely positive character, not as a ‘value’, but as something posited.

The positive character of negative space is expressed most directly in the closing statements of Kawabata’s 1968 Nobel lecture – particularly in the positive meanings given to ‘emptiness’ and ‘nothingness’ – and their contrast with ‘nihilism’ – this is perhaps what I’m after:

The following is from the biography of Myoe by his disciple Kikai:

“Saigyo frequently came and talked of poetry. His own attitude towards poetry, he said, was far from the ordinary. Cherry blossoms, the cuckoo, the moon, snow: confronted with all the manifold forms of nature, his eyes and his ears were filled with emptiness. And were not all the words that came forth true words? When he sang of the blossoms the blossoms were not on his mind, when he sang of the moon he did not think of the moon. As the occasion presented itself, as the urge arose, he wrote poetry. The red rainbow across the sky was as the sky taking on color. The white sunlight was as the sky growing bright. Yet the empty sky, by its nature, was not something to become bright. It was not something to take on color. With a spirit like the empty sky he gives color to all the manifold scenes but not a trace remained. In such poetry was the Buddha, the manifestation of the ultimate truth.”

Here we have the emptiness, the nothingness, of the Orient. My own works have been described as works of emptiness, but it is not to be taken for the nihilism of the West. The spiritual foundation would seem to be quite different. Dogen entitled his poem about the seasons, “Innate Reality”, and even as he sang of the beauty of the seasons he was deeply immersed in Zen.

[reference: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1968/kawabata/lecture/]

all this means – like Eno and Yoshimura – is to find your own way to free the space… embrace the “gridliness” of your tools while realizing you/they are not alone… for there is silence… silence is… the silent space is your partner and guide… accept its offer of friendship, as something which may bear the color of your tone… but do not crowd it out, nor attempt to make the it a ground in the sense of aesthetics, in the sense of the figure-ground relation … leave its emptiness all the more as emptiness… so that it may bear in its groundlessness…

In this, and like Eno, you will not replicate the music of Satie, but instead find your own way. And this way may be just as far from Eno’s as his was from Satie’s.

[dude]

one trick i love is playing what i intend.
if i want to compose like satie, well, satie was a genius and that is a pretty lofty goal.
but you’ll get there if you play what you want to play even if it is line by line dedicated.
an easy way in multiple software platforms is to interpret audio as polyphonic midi data.
notes, velocity, timing etc. you can send that info anywhere you want or change it.
subtlety will be programmed in by you. you will compose it.
there’s a fun max for live device that adds “human” timing to clocking.

i say start simple and learn to carve out tools that’ll be reusable for your intended goals.

try: if in ableton, simply turn off grid (is that option 4 shorcut?). timing becomes YOURS.

[DoS]

wiring the overall pressure output through slew generators to VCA and/or VCF, and the gate outputs directly to sequencer clock input(s). It’s a great way to imbue “expression” into a sequence without exactly playing the notes by hand

I wonder if anyone has tried this with the CV inputs of an Elektron Analog 4 Mk2? I’ve not seem mention of the new inputs getting much use in general, but this sounds like it could be useful.

[TomWhitwell]

The only way I can get ‘there’ is allowing something else to control the thing - this is a relatively simple patch with a wogglebug driving a quantiser driving two sine waves. The Wogglebug clock has a bit of slop, and the notes are triggered when they cross boundaries on the quantiser, which somehow sounds quite musical (to me)

[mthruwtsn]

One thought I have had is about sequencer with variable step length being clocked from an LFO with variable phase outputs. This way I could get different amount of rubato by modulating the phase and speed of the LFO (say 4 different phase outputs controlling four sequencers). Has anyone ever seen an LFO like this? I know there are things like the filter 8 which I have which will do fixed phase outputs but what about variable phase? Cheers!