Analogue-sequencer

Another late night, another new build in Yahoo files.

This one fixes a little bug that crept into bank selection.
Delay is now scaled by tbase, and there are some changes to the 
repeat events...
rep*N is gone.
There are now 6 repeat events:
rep*2, note + n
rep*2, velo + n
rep*3, note + n
rep*3, velo + n
rep*4, note + n
rep*4, velo + n

These differ from the previous versions in a number of ways.
The length value no longer affects the timing of the repeats - in 
all cases the step is evenly divided.
e.g. if you set rep*2 on a step in a pattern with tbase=16, the two 
repeat notes will have an effective tbase of 32.
You can now offset velocity on the repeat notes as well as the 
pitch. If you want to offset note *and* velocity, just assign two 
auxes - the repeat count on the last aux applies on a step with two 
active events that set different repeats.
Tie now applies across all repeat notes. If you set a note to repeat 
twice, with a note offset of +12 and tie on, you will get the 
primary note, tied into the repeat note up an octave, tied into the 
next step. With auto-glide, this makes from some nice little acidy 
blips ;-)

Note that the addition of the extra repeat events means some of the 
higher numbered events have moved upwards - you may need to re-
assign events in existing patterns if you have used them.
Also added are 'aux C = cc #n' and 'aux C = event n'

Cheers,
Colin f

hi Colin,
> rep*N is gone.
> There are now 6 repeat events:
> ....
> These differ from the previous versions in a number of ways.
> The length value no longer affects the timing of the repeats - in 
> all cases the step is evenly divided.

these are probably the first changes that i'm not pleased with. i use 
the rep*N function quite a bit, in particular with more than 4 
repeats, to get a kind of glitchy/broken effect in combination with 
drums & drumloops. a trick i've also gotten used to is setting the N 
to the maximum value and having randomizers vary the length of the 
note, also to get a broken-machine/stuck note kind of effect. i can 
see the added value of the new repeat events, but i'd really like to 
see rep*N back, preferably in combination with the note-length thingy.

grtz Chiel

> these are probably the first changes that i'm not pleased with. i use 
> the rep*N function quite a bit, in particular with more than 4 
> repeats, to get a kind of glitchy/broken effect in combination with 
> drums & drumloops. a trick i've also gotten used to is setting the N 
> to the maximum value and having randomizers vary the length of the 
> note, also to get a broken-machine/stuck note kind of effect. i can 
> see the added value of the new repeat events, but i'd really like to 
> see rep*N back, preferably in combination with the note-length thingy.

No problem Chiel - I'll put it back in. I hadn't really had any feedback
from people using it - more complaints that it was hard to predict the
timing of repeats.
I took it out because the changes to the way repeats are handled meant it
would need re-coded in a way that needs some thinking about.
Guess I'll have to think about it ;-)

Cheers,
Colin f

In latest OS (3.971), and have set up an aux event, auxes to track n.
However, the events themselves are now presented as pitches - lowest value
c#0, highest value g# 0. Should this be?

> No problem Chiel - I'll put it back in. I hadn't really had any 
> feedback from people using it - more complaints that it was hard to 
> predict the timing of repeats.

hi Colin,

thnx a lot for putting it back in in v3.973..it's different though. 
in some ways cooler than it was, in others less so. 
the cool bit is that the number of repeats that are now possible is 
much higher which gets some pretty freaky effects. the less cool side 
is that it works way differently to the way it used to. the way it 
used to work was that if i just turned the rep*N value up to max, i 
could vary the number of repeats with the note-length. so if the 
length value was 12 i'd get no repeats, if the length was 6 the 
number of evenly spaced repeats would be 2, if the length was 3 i'd 
get 4 evenly spaced repeats, a length of 4 would make it a triplet 
repeat, 2 made 6 repeats etc., and i could get nice sort of up-beat 
things before the following note with length values above 6. the new 
version still interacts with the length parameter, but the smallest 
number of repeats i can get, with note-length set to 12 (max) appears 
to be something like 4 or 5, in a pattern with tbase 4. the extended 
value is cool, being able to get more than 8 repeats, is cool, but 
i'd really like to see the old way of interacting with the length 
value back..
btw i had some weird stuff going on during sysex dumps back to the 
P3's after doing the bootloader update; during the upload of the 
latest FW after the bootloader update the display kept flickering BAD 
DATA through the usual 'send more data' routine. i did the whole 
thing twice on the first machine with identical results, then once on 
the other, again with the same result, so i figured it'd be ok. i got 
the same kind of flickering BAD BLOCK messages through the sysx-
memory dumps back to the P3's on both occasions too. but it all seems 
to be working fine so i guess it's allright.

grtz Chiel

It occurred to me - it seems that the interest in the p3, and the praise for has been recently growing quite a bit (outside this group, i meen)

I'm sure ive heard the phrase 'notron killer' about the place, and, so far as i can tell, the notron was the device that always held the gauntlet in such areas, so the word seems to be spreading that king is dead, long live the king, and all that... ; )

But this wasn't ment to be one of those emails.  What i was wondering, all be it nosily, was 'what next'?

A lot of people always  have more then one project on the go at once - i know im one of them.  So im wondering if your working on anything else that the likes of us may be building in the future.

I heard mention of the R3 (?) a while back, and was there mention of a 'bigger' p3 type device?

I'm fine with a "hmm.. there's a few bits" type answer, if you feel im being prying, but, hey, im just curious really ; )

Cheers, Julian


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

on 09-09-2004 15:08, Paul Nagle at softroom@btinternet.com wrote:

> And in terms of
> features, there's *nothing* that comes close to the P3 as of today.
> Tomorrow, who can say?

How about Colin? :-)))

Boele

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 13:05:05 +0100, "Julian" <julian@22host24.com>
wrote:

>I'm sure ive heard the phrase 'notron killer' about the place, and, so far as i can tell, the notron was the device that always held the gauntlet in such areas, so the word seems to be spreading that king is dead, long live the king, and all that... ; )

The Notron does still have a few cool tricks of its own the P3 doesn't
emulate. For  example,  I love its knobs that globally alter note
length and velocity, especially when you group multiple notes together
and use the knob to bring the whole group 'in or out' by tweaking
their velocities. 

It also has a strangeness about it that means you never quite
understand it - which *can* be a good thing. 

Oh, Beatcreep and Supersteps are pretty awesome features too.... and I
never even used version 2. However, it was never intuitive enough -
even the developer had to keep referring to the manual when he brought
it round here...

The P3 may not kill the Notron but it's cheaper, uses standard parts
(and can therefore be repaired) and a good shape. And in terms of
features, there's *nothing* that comes close to the P3 as of today.
Tomorrow, who can say?

Paul
---
Paul Nagle - SoftRoom Music - www.softroom.co.uk
          Bogus Focus Records - www.BogusFocus.com

> A lot of people always  have more then one project on the go 
> at once - i know im one of them.  So im wondering if your 
> working on anything else that the likes of us may be building 
> in the future.

Phew... if only I had the hours in the day !
 
> I heard mention of the R3 (?) a while back, and was there 
> mention of a 'bigger' p3 type device?

I still have a need for a good percussion oriented sequencer, so either R3
needs doing, or P4 will need to have the ability to do percussion patterns
as well as notes.

My current thinking is that it would be a lot of effort to start from
scratch on a totally new sequencer design, and that a lot of the design
philosphy of P3 will carry over to P4.
So it makes sense to start by building the P4 'brain' around the much more
powerful ARM processor, giving it the I/O capacity to handle a more
sophisticated user interface, but making it support the existing P3 user
interface, so I could get a head start by porting P3 to the new CPU.
This gives the possibility that at some point a P3.5 will emerge, which
looks exactly like P3 on the outside, but has 4 times the code space and 20
times the CPU speed. This could add further improvements such as multiple
midi outputs, high speed I/O to drive CV/Gate outputs directly, and possibly
compact flash data storage.

But my first priority now is to get the manufacture of ready-built P3s
out-sourced. If they sell well enough, maybe I can give up my day job for a
while, and concentrate full time on designing the ultimate sequencer.
Time will tell...

Cheers,
Colin f