Ideas for any interested developers

Maaan, I want a cello…

I have an idea. Yes, again! Not sure if it’s possible though (for many reasons). Yes, again!

Sooo… Youtube module. A small browser window that connects to youtube (vimeo, odysee - whatever would be fine in copyright sense). CV controls the position of the cursor, well, basically it scans the video, trigger does the start\stop stuff. Might be cool to have a VCA too.

So again, I am not sure if it’s possible and if someone would find it useful other than me. Here we go! Another strange and probably impossible idea

New idea. A placeholder module. It replaces modules that are not available for some reason. It could also hold a name and maybe settings of a missing module (while doing nothing, of course). I wonder if it is possible to do. VCV tracks the missing modules and compose them into list that you see when opening a patch with modules that are not present in your library. So maybe you need to make just one step further. Or it could be that it is actually a limit of what you can do… I don’t know, but this placeholder thing would be really nice to have!

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I think your ideas are good but your drawings are the best!

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Oh yes! I do like that sound. A very interesting instrument. I had never heard of it before - Thanks!

It does have a gorgeous tone with wide range of sounds. I wish I could play one, but I am hopeless when it comes to any kind of string instrument. But the next best thing is having a son that is an accomplished cellist!

Even better when you sometimes get to play along side him :smiley:

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In the TTL universe, that sounds much like a serial-to-parallel converter. Or an “8-Bit Serial-In/Parallel-Out Shift Register”.

See https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/cd74ac164.pdf?ts=1675922218127&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252F

Could build it with VCV Library - ML Modules Shift Register (with a trigger for each stage for that random selection) and VCV Library - ML Modules S&H 8 plus a counter of some sort.

Making it work for 16 outputs is left as an exercise for the student.

[Later…] It sounds like VCV Library - stoermelder SIPO , which I have not actually tried to use yet. “Serial-in parallel-out shift register with polyphonic output and CV controls for skipping and incrementing on sampled values”.

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Dear Santa: I want a module that can take a selection of pre-wired modules and display it as an expandable “black box” panel, with labels you can type into, or are automagically labeled. Only inputs and outputs that you choose show up. Right-click to access and/or edit the contents.

Say I have a selection that uses a sequencer, 16 S&H, Random, CV-Map, a sequencer (like IONS), another sequencer (Count Modula’s 16 STEP SEQUENCER) plus ST16 (trigger o/p expander), Merge, and offset/scale. This gives me a sequence of 15 notes that repeats but randomly changes one at a time. All I really need to see is a “Clock In” and a “Poly V/Oct out”.

It would save a lot of visual real estate in a patch.

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yes, I tried using the RF module from Stoermelder PackTau, and some teleport modules.

image

press the small button on “RF” and:

RF hides/shows it’s neighbouring modules - note the space between the first Scope and RF.

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Oh. That looks promising.

A few minutes later … Uh-oh. I see why RF is still in the “experimental” stage. If you hide the modules, then move RF close to other modules, when you reveal them again you end up with a Star Trek-style transporter accident, with overlapping modules. Plus I had some patch cords go way up past the upper limit of the scrollable space (possibly converging at infinity?). The sound was unaffected though. Gotta move it back to a safe place before revealing again. It’s just … unnerving, that’s all.

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Rather than cellular automata that others have mentioned, that looks to me more like Swarm Intelligence , as in the Boids program.

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I wanted to make a module based on boids a few years ago. The ppl I shared that idea with didn’t like it much ;-(

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Those people were crazy! :slight_smile:

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This would be really useful, especially if it preserved cable connections. Right now you have to get a screenie of the original patch and the list of missing modules, then work out which went where, and redo all the settings and connections with substitute modules.

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Hi Andre! impressive the number of ideas you have! :ok_hand:

About the placeholder module as suggestion, of course it’s a GENIUS idea! but honestly I don’t know how it’s possible. Perhaps Marc Boulé, he’s an excellent C++ developer (Impromptu/MindMeld/Geodesics modules) and super guy.

Be sure If anybody can develop this module, he deserves the Nobel Prize!!! :pray: :grinning:

It will be cool (and “perhaps” more simpler) about implementation directly in VCV Rack, as feature, because it opens preset files. I guess, by using “if missing module, replaces it by default placeholder with… patchcords” technique, the placeholder indicates (somewhere) the name/brand of missing module, named input and output ports, maybe the abilty to… download it, and so on.

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It’s not this impressive, to be honest. I’m just fantasizing a lot, like “what if…” and “how could I do that…” and so on. And most of the times there is a solution with two-three-ten-twenty modules, but I am thinking in a similar way, I guess, as John Rose does. I would really like to have a compact solution, in one module

I think so. I would really like to have it in the VCV fundamental collection and I was about to write about it to VCV developers. I decided against it though, because what if it is possible and what if they develop it to put it in the commercial VCV version. And also I think if Stoermelder and MindMeld have a certain “meta” level of controlling the patch, maybe it is possible to create this kind of module for other developers too, not just VCV devs…

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Merci Dom, that’s very kind of you to say! I’ve kind of taken an extended coding break from Rack these days though (this march it would have been 5 years of near continuous development in my free time). It kind of feels good to be away from modules for a bit. But as always, it’s fun to see how things are evolving and what the many talented people here are doing! :vulcan_salute:

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De rien Marc, you’re welcome! :slight_smile:

Another reply (another idea): via a specific module, I think it’s not possible… but, by developing a parallel standalone application (if not integrated in VCV Rack) who analyzes the patch file, and check all installed modules on your system. For each missing module, possible to modify the patch (it’s a jSon file) by “replacing” by appropriate ghost module.

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Module idea: Countermeasure

I’d like a module to which you pass a clock signal that will count down bars from a number you set (it assumes everything is 4/4 for simplicity’s sake) and you can set either a one shot trigger (fire trigger after bar X) or a loop (fire trigger every X bars for Y loops or infinite), with a reset so it starts counting again from the starting point back down to zero.

First part…

It has a visible large font countdown showing in bars and beats e.g. 003:03… 003:02… in red telling you when it will next fire and the text and module surround turns red and pulses when at the penultimate bar, 000:04… 000:03…

The second part is… send out a gate for Y bars

Once the target is reached in the countdown you can set a number of bars duration for it to send out a high gate signal and it will do this and then either completely stop or start the next countdown loop. When it is running the text and module turns blue and the countdown changes to show how many bars/beats until the output gate drops low.

Controls…

  1. Knob (and CV input) - X aka COUNTDOWN_LENGTH - for setting bars to count down before gate goes high… 1 to 8 then 16 to 256 (power of 2 exponential)

  2. Knob (and CV input) - Y aka LOOP_LENGTH - for setting bars to count down before gate goes low… 1 to 8 then 16 to 256 (power of 2 exponential)

  3. Knob (and CV input) - Z aka NUM_ITERATIONS - for setting number of loops… 0 to 16

  4. Infinite loops override toggle switch - INFINITE_LOOPS_YN

  5. CV out - LOOP_START - trigger on starting loop/one shot after countdown

  6. CV out - LOOP_END - trigger on ending loop/one shot

  7. CV out - LOOP_STATE - gate either low (counting down before loop/one shot) or high (inside loop/one shot)

  8. CV input - CLOCK - ext clock, suggest same pulse standard used by CLOCKED

  9. CV input - RESET - resets everything and starts a fresh countdown plus resets the loop counter to zero.

I thought about adding a pause button, but suggest that keep it simple and if the clock pulse drops then so does the countdown until it returns and picks up where it left off.

I suggest red and blue as these seem the most obvious visual contrast and people with colourblindness would notice.

Main use case for this module would be things like marking off ‘verse’ and ‘chorus’ sections in one shot mode and setting up drum fill sections in loop mode.

My idea is that by only being driven by pulses and assuming a 4/4 the module doesn’t need to know the actual BPM, just react to each pulse. In fact you could even have a ‘beats only’ mode where all counts are in terms of pulses and bars aren’t mentioned if you wanted to use this with different time signatures it would become completely time signature agnostic.

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Just pitching an idea for an oscillator. Conceptually it’s actually about silencing parts of an oscillator´s waveshape according to some on/off pattern.

Somewhat inspired by similar unusual functionality of the Roland Alpha Juno 1 DCO https://www.polynominal.com/site/studio/gear/synth/Roland_alpha_juno/roland-alpha-juno1-manual.pdf

So…could be just the “pulse pattern generator” that can be used as an oscillator. And/or it could be used to modulate other stuff. At audiorate it could modulate audiorate signals, e.g. audiorate oscillator wave shapes. And off course you could offer some internal shapes to modulate. But…also keep and output for the pattern(s) to modulate external stuff.

E.g. using amplitude modulation to create similar patterns as seen from the Roland Alpha Juno 1 DCO.

E.g. turning the first a half of a Saw into this (by zeroing parts out) |
||_|\

Or the first half a 50% pulse into this (by zeroing parts out). ||_||__||

In this example video I used a Trgger-Gate sequencer to create the on/of patterns and amplitude modulation to actually silence out part of an oscillator´s waveshape, according to that pattern.

This is just a crude example and proof of concept. And pretty sloppy at that. But I hope good enough to get the general idea.

Would also be nice to be able to modulate the patterns. E.g. Switching individual steps on-/of or set/modulate patterns via CV (e.g converted to binary) to set patterns, And/or introduce binary logic to set/modulate patterns. And or not just have triggers/gates (0/1) but also CV Voltages as in a CV sequencer. The various/varying amplitudes would effect the waveshape of the oscillator/signal being modulated in way more ways (if AM is used).

Note that relative shifting of phase and varying pulsewidth also have their effects. And of course the relative frequency ratios of the patterngenerator and the oscillator/signal being modulated.

Anyway…many more options to have fun with the concept can be thought of.

There are some obscure elements n this example. There is a (very fast) slew limiter in there, which I used as a sort-of crude ‘averaging’ Low Pass filter and shape modulator. The precision delay is just there because I kept running into sync/phase issues, that I just manually corrected.

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