Manual syncing, ideas welcome

The situation is a setup for live playing, I want to sync my VCV Rack patch with other things running at the same tempo. In the studio I can use midi pulses in various ways to do that, tweaking to account for latency but playing live that’s a bit fiddly and likely to go wrong.

In the patch, I’ve got run and reset buttons triggered from midi pads or clicking with the mouse. That’s OK and gets it roughly right. I’m a drummer so I’d hope my time isn’t so bad, but hitting a rubbery pad isn’t the same as hitting a drum and it’s hard to get spot on. Also as a drummer, I know that ‘spot on’ isn’t always ‘right’, musically you sometimes want a bit of advance / drag of the beat depending on the musical style.

The obvious method of turning the tempo knob directly doesn’t work well in practice as it’s too sensitive.

My workaround is in the screenshot below, I can momentarily connect tweaked CVs to the BPM input of Impromptu’s Clcoked, to slightly speed up or slow down the clock tempo and feel into into place, then disconnect the cable when it’s good. I’ve use a sample-and-hold to pick up the original tempo CV and attenuverters to offset the voltage slightly, so I can use it at any tempo without getting the calculator out.

It works, but seems a bit overkill - is there some more elegant way to advance/retard the clock or even better keep it at the same tempo but nudge it forward/backward?

Perhaps by using Clocked’s BPM sync mode, you might get something better:

But your external source would have to be at a higher pulses-per-clock though. Something to explore I guess :slight_smile:

Reminder: MIDI support is going to be improved in Rack 2.x, which I expect will allow us to correctly sync Rack clock generators to external hardware via MIDI.

Have you tried triggering them with the first pulse of the clock signal you’re sending from your main clock? You can use Vult Bypass to only let the first pulse pass through:

I’d send a clock signal from my main clock to Rack the whole time (rather than disconnecting the cable) and would use Bogaudio CVD to nudge. I’d also probably use some stoermelder module to control Bogaudio CVD from an external controller rather than the mouse.

Thanks for the ideas. But I’m not wanting to use an external clock for this one. To be robust against forgotten cables, broken cables, network problems etc. in a live situation. Belt and braces, I want to have a manual syncing option.

This is my Take 2 on the matter and this works pretty well - again picking up the exact voltage for the tempo using sample and hold to begin with. Then applying a +ve or -ve tweak to it (two attenuverters in series to dilute the effect of the pot), through AS Flow so I can let the clock drift forward/backward at a gentle pace until it sounds right. Then click off the Flow to return to the exact tempo CV.

I might even write a little module to that in one go, I think it should be easy - famous last words.

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…btw Marc I’m a big fan of Clocked, I’m using four of them in this patch and the way they link up is very pleasing. Thank you!

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Oh, cool :slight_smile: glad you like the module! Cheers!