LaMeJuIS gets a facelift, new features

Announcements
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Hey yall,

LaMeJuIS 2.1.0 hit the vcv library yesterday and I wanted to call out some of the cool new features in the new version. It’s exciting to me.

First off, I have a brand new front panel, thanks to Dave Benham of Venom modules. The new panel is completely different, in particular, the matrix is transposed so now columns represents inputs and rows represents logic operations. This makes it easier to see dependencies between columns at a glance, and also allows each co-mutes to line up with the input it effects.

Next, we have a really lovely time quantize mode available in the right click menu. In this mode changes to switches and knobs, don’t take affect until each voice would naturally have had a change. It took many iterations to get this right, but the result is a really natural playing feel, such that you can manipulate basically any parameter without causing glitches or a melody lurching in ugly sorts of ways. It is so fun to play: flip a switch and watch one melody naturally segue into the next.

I have also introduced polyphony. Each pitch select input is now polyphonic, resulting in polyphonic triggers and v/oct from the corresponding voice. This allows LJ to scale to a huge number of interlocking melodies, grouped into sets that share co-mutes. I like sending (0, 2.5, 5)V into these inputs to get three trios that work together, or sending scales offsets of the same sequence. It’s surprisingly easy to get lots of voices in highly coherent cacophony. The new rule becomes that the matrix effects all the melodies while the co-mutes it’s only effect each group.

Also, there is a Clock input, which sample and holds the entire state of LaMeJuIS (and dramatically reduce the CPU), as well as a reset input to reset the clock dividers.

Finally one of my favorite new features is the simple addition of the “off” logic. Because LJ builds a melody out of simple logical parts, turning off individual logical operations gives a really natural way of simplifying or building a melody, as the piece calls for it.

If you use a launchpad, I have custom modes that map all of LJ’s parameters available on my github, including a patch that maps them all. I’m happy to provide instructions to anyone who wants to go down that road.

On a personal level, I’m suffering from extremely bad RSI, and have been learning Talon Voice to code all of this (if you’re starting to suffer from RSI, please do not ignore it, you don’t want it to get bad!) As a result, I can’t really make patches so I’ve been playing the same patch with a launchpad X pretty much every day for the last couple months. The patch itself is very simple, just three plaits modules, each sequenced polyphonically by LJ giving me nine voices. I perform primarily by playing the switches on LJ and muting the 9 voices. I can’t really make a video right now, but if you want to know what it sounds like check out my SoundCloud (I think that particular video uses an earlier version of time quantize mode, so some of those glitches actually don’t happened in the “final” version of the module)

Anyway, thanks for checking it out and another big thanks to Dave Benham, and to the community for being so awesome.

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Thanks @joyofresh for creating this plugin and letting me work with you on a new faceplate. For me at least, the new design makes it much easier to wrap my head around what is going on.

Again I can’t believe how easy and fun it is to come up with interesting melodies, harmonies, rhythms, etc., especially when I combine it with my Venom Rhythm Explorer.

Both Rhythm Explorer and LameJuis excel as live instruments with many options to tweak and take you to totally new realms. But they also work wonderfully as inspirations where you can quickly find a melody and rhythmic pattern you like and then build around that core until you have an entire song. All the settings and random seed values are stored with the patch so you can reopen the patch later and pick up exactly where you left off.

As soon as this new LameJuis release became available, I started a new patch from scratch. Within 10-15 minutes I had a really cool sequenced syncopated melody and harmonies that are the basis of the following track. Of course I spent hours experimenting and tweaking to get sequenced variations. For example, sequencing different co-mute pitch selections to vary the harmonies. Or changing the envelopes and/or delay effects to make the same lick sound completely different.

But often times the hard/intimidating part is getting that initial spark of an idea, and Rhythm Explorer with LameJuis really facilitates moving past that initial barrier.

This patch uses a beta version of my Venom plugin that has not yet been released. All the brown modules already exist in the library, and the red modules are new beta expansion modules for my various Venom mixers. The core of the patch will work fine without the beta modules, but the effects and much of the variation sequencing will be dysfunctional. To get the beta release you will need a github account and then you can download the beta version at https://github.com/DaveBenham/VenomModules/actions/runs/6440083780

NewVenomAndLameJuis.vcv (9.3 KB)

I hope others enjoy LameJuis (and Rhythm Explorer) as much as I have.

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Really nice! I hear almost sonic the hedgehog vibes, the syncopation from RE and the polyphony (in the sense of multiple melodies) from LJ really come through. Also through-sequencing with 8face (if im reading the patch right) is nice. Both of our modules have so much front panel configuration that 8face is almost a requirement to do anything sensible.

:fire::fire:

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Actually most of the parameter sequencing is done via Transit. I could have done more with CV, but it is just easier with Transit.

The only thing 8Face is doing is briefly switch Rhythm Explorer from 100% gate width to 50%. Most of the patch runs at 100% width, which ties many beats together, making LameJuis input changes more sparse. Toward the end I switch to 50% gate width, which causes a much denser change rate.

I had to use 8Face to change the gate width because the option is only available in the context menu - it is not a parameter that Transit can control.

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I’m not familiar with Transit - does it just require a param, or does it require a param widget? I often made params that can only be controlled from the context menu - so they are real params, but not controller by a param widget. Easy to do that - don’t know if it helps in this situation.

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I’m not sure. You certainly would not be able to select it during the Transit mapping process. So the only way you might be able to control it is select the entire module for mapping.

But I tried mapping to your Substitute module. The Bacon Lint Buddy indicates your context menu AGC option (automatic gain control) is a parameter. But Transit was unable to map to it when I mapped the entire module.

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Wow this just triggered a wave of nostalgia, it really reminds me of this incredibly excellent track:

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Thanks!

Cool track - Plaid is totally new to me. There is so much music out there that I know nothing about!

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my favourite sequencer - sorry I broke it with a quantiser. It takes alot of pratice but it never stops being fun My first experiment with this.

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:fire::fire::fire: Very cool, very creative, thanks for sharing!