Module ideas

Hypothetically combine a tracker module with code from RackNES and it seems not far off from actually having FamiTracker inside of Rack.

and practically … here’s a screenshot of famitracker … all that information on the screen should fit into a tiny module screen

As usual, I’m posting an early concept I might work on eventually, to gather feedback / gauge interest. If you are working on something similar, I ask to be notified so I do not duplicate efforts.

Self-patched self-modifying step sequencer IMPLEMENTED as Modulus Salomonis Regis

Monophonic step sequencer where you program individual pitches, quantized to a scale with external scale support (cf. Darius). The default range is 3 octaves, you can increase or decrease it with Min/Max knobs. You can change the amount of steps. The module would be offered in 8 steps form factor, maybe 16 too but it would be huge.

The sequencer is programmed through self-patching to self-modify a sequence, much like Mog Network. Depending on your approach to patching, and which external modules you use, it can be very deterministic or completely chaotic. It aims to be fun to program and perform with rather than versatile in configuration options.

There are global step controls accepting trig/gates. Upon receiving any step control trig/gate, the module starts waiting a window of 1ms, then processes all the trigs in batch, to apply precedence and addition rules. This way, all sort of logic can be performed with external modules (as those add at least one sample of delay). Trigs sent to other parts of the module received outside the window have no effect. Here are the step control trigs from high to low precedence:

  • Go to a random queued step, then clear the queue. If queue empty and no other step trig is received, cancel the wait window.
  • Random teleport to any step
  • Random walk (wrap around)
  • Go back a step (wrap around at the start)
  • Advance a step (wrap around at the end)

The pitch for each step is shown on a LCD, and can be changed with an infinite knob per step. Internally, it saves the precise V/Oct, and quantizes it if the scale changes.

Each step also has CV trigger inputs. Simultaneous trigs operating on scale degrees are additive. Operations that would make a pitch go out of bounds wrap around.

  • +1 scale degree
  • +2 scale degree
  • +3 scale degree
  • +1 octave
  • -1 scale degree
  • -2 scale degree
  • -3 scale degree
  • -1 octave
  • Queue this to be the next step, after the current trig wait window
  • Make this the current step after current trig wait window is over

Each step has multiple trig outs:

  • Trig when reached
  • 50% chance trig when reached
  • Trig every 2nd time reached
  • Trig queued on next step when reached

Outputs are just CV/Gate (forwarded from input). There is a slide knob and trig in, and slide is only enabled for a step if a trig is received.

Every trig is accepted polyphonically for ease of merging with external modules.

I hope I’m explaining it well. The way I envision it, it’s simple to operate but a bit hard to explain.

4 Likes

Game Console emulator

Done (at least for NES)

I ll love play this

1 Like

As you know, I’m thinking a lot of coding a tracker module. One question for me is: 8 (mono) tracks or 16 (mono) tracks?

I think 8 voices gives: 1 for bass 1 for melody 3 for chords 3 for drums

but if I want more, I have to sync 2 trackers …

… on the other hand, 16 tracks fill up a lot of the screen, especially when most of this tracks are not used.

What would you prefer: a tracker that comes with 8 tracks or one that comes with 16 tracks?

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I love the trackers, to me one mono track 8 step , since it can be concatenated

(why not make a thread for discus this instead of write here?)

edited one mono tracker beside a sampler (I think the sampler is the most important part) that support effect commands

Why not both? I’ve a 16 step sequencer which, when released, will also have an 8 step version, maybe even a 32 step version, all it takes is altering one line of code if the rest of the module is written to accommodate that.

A 2 octave keyboard 4 row quantizer module:

Each keyboard row with:

  1. V/Oct in and out.
  2. Transpose knob range: -36/+36
  3. Transpose scale input.
  4. Trigger and Gate out`s.
  5. Min and Max note range knobs.

image Module ideas based on Xenakis UBIC2 Software is written in C ++ and distribution is free for ios and osx or windows this app is for drawing music

Official site:

PDF with description:

Thank you…! :wink:

4 Likes

gatewave

a sampler that detects peaks/hits in an audio sample (recorded or loaded) and creates a polyphonic gate/trigger pattern out of them which can then be played with a phase input

Once you have a sample in, the module runs the detection, and picks points where hits seem to happen. The user can fine tune the exact position of these hits and assign them to different channels inside the polyhonic output to drive different drums/synths etc. It should be also possible to disable/add points manually.

My main usecase would be to record some rhythms by beatboxing them, and use this module to quickly get a pattern out of that and drive other sound sources inside rack.

The hit detection could be pretty simple without going into analyzing the frequency content, although that could enhance sorting the triggers to channels by default, but this could be done fast and easy by hand too so that isn’t necessary. Even the detection itself isn’t crucial if you can just place triggers on a display relative to a waveform that is being shown.

inputs

  • audio in (mono is fine)
  • controls for playing the gate loop (just a phase input or a start trigger with speed parameter)

outputs

  • polyphonic output that sends out the generated gate signals
  • audio output for monitoring the waveform

parameters

  • record button
  • loop start/end knob to be able to crop a loop to a certain length
  • controls for playing/monitoring the sample itself

not-yet-module

a module that parses module ideas from this thread and shows the description of one randomly on load and when randomized.

has a link to module development resources in the context menu

3 Likes

Honestly, we should just outsource this thread to GPT-2. It is pretty good at giving us the specs of very innovative modules.

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This one is a bit far-fetched. How about an audio recording module that automatically uploads any recorded audio to, say, an Amazon S3 bucket. Any recordings uploaded by this module would be considered free-use, license free, etc. There would have to be a corresponding website for people to browse and download the audio files. There might have to be some monthly subscription to support the bandwidth.

I know that this idea is not fully conceptualized so please don’t punish me too harshly for not thinking through the specifics. It’s been buzzing through my mind lately and it’s nice to throw it out there. But I like the idea of having a extremely low barrier to share audio from within VCV Rack. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

what is that :smiley: feels like it’s been generated randomly, can’t see where one module ends

Don’t know about Amazon buckets but I like the idea. What about a soundcloud player? :wink:

@unlessgames I like your ideas!

What I was thinking about was more like a way to share sounds clips with other musicians, not really to publish … er… um… actual music (gasp!).

So, for example, maybe I string together a rough patch that sounds interesting. I personally might not ever use the audio, but I might as well make it available to the public, especially if they’re going to mulch it with a granulator or effects processor. So I carelessly record 20 seconds, and hit Stop/Upload, and I’m done! The idea is to reduce the effort necessary to publish a little clip of audio for other musicians to use for their compositions. :dancing_women:

The idea came to me because I’m slowly building up a library of raw materials for using in my own compositions, such as audio from public domain moves, public domain sound cloud recordings, etc.

I’m looking for the equivalent to an audio junkyard. I don’t need glossy, amazing loops that have been meticulously cropped and normalized. I enjoy sending audio through so many effects that it’s indistinguishable from the original recordings anyhow. :control_knobs: :fire:

I don’t have the time to build such a thing. But I like the idea!

sounds like soundcloud to me :slight_smile:

joke aside, I get that you mean more “raw” audio, but what I meant is to use soundcloud to store this raw kind of audio. Only saying this cause it would be cool to have - in some way - a broader range of contributors to such a sound library, so people who don’t use rack can add to it as well. so the module would be just a gateway into it.

I guess the simplest prototype without a third party database would be an extremely simple server that stores a fixed amount of samples that get discarded when enough new samples are uploaded. and I mean audio-rate samples, so it would be like just one 8-hour tape loop for example that anyone can play or record onto. So the whole thing would be without browsing, users etc.

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I fed GPT-2 (via the site I linked) excerpts of the spec sheet of real modules and let it do the rest :smiley:
It is surprisingly good at making extremely plausible-looking jargon even in very specialized domains, so long as you prime it correctly.

ah the transformer! I wasn’t checking the first link cause I thought you talk about licensing this thread under some specific license (called gpt-2). I was quite confused :smiley:

had some fun with that site before by feeding in an incomplete story, cherry picking the output by hand and feeding it back again and so on. It’s the first text generator I’ve tried that could be used as a truly meaningful writer companion, very neat!

That’s really clever. :slight_smile: I agree that soundcloud would be a good destination for the audio as well.