Algorithmic Acid

the new sequencer module is really cool for drums, had to record a quick demo

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felt like this one deserved bass

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Made a Quickstart guide for the new version. Still working out a few things, should be able to upload in a day or two.

The basic workflow of the ensemble is to start from the BlankSlate snapshot. This empties all the instrument and FX slots and clears all the sequencer data, as well as initializing the mixer. Start building your material by adding instruments and fx and sequencer data. Once you get something you like, make a snapshot. Make modifications to the snapshot (Mutes, probability, sequencer data, even instruments and FX assignments). Build a set of snapshots and walk through them to perform a track. Don’t forget to hit record!

8 Channels of Drums:
Each channel has both a source layer and a primitive layer.
The Source layer can load the following engines.

Skin: Uses 2 oscillators and a shapable noise source. This a useful synth for making kicks, snares, toms, conga, and many other types of percussion.

Metal: Uses 4 Square wave oscillators with FM and Filter FM. This engine is useful for hats, rides, crashes, cowbells, snares, and many other clanky sounds.

Clap: It’s a clap!

FM1: Useful two OP fm synth with short delay lines built in. Good for a whole world of percussive adventures.

Sample: Simple sample player to augment the synths. Can use modulation to control which sample plays from the sample bank.

The Primitive engine can load either of two basic synth engines for layering with the source. It can alternatively load an insert effect for the source engine.

Sine: A swept sine generator with saturator

Noise: Noise wth an decay envelope.

Brute, Sat2, Grunger and Satur8 are various flavors of dirt boxes. There is also a simple delay.

8 Channels of Synths:
The synth section has a master volume modulation source, useful, for example, for using an envelope triggered by the same source as the kick drum to sidechain the synths to the kick. Each channel can load one of the following engines.

3ISH: Basic one oscillator monosynth

Chord: 4 part paraphonic square wave chord synth

RingSine: Duophonic sine synth that can morph between mixing and amplitude modulating the two sources

THCK: 3 oscillator monosynth inspired by the classic

4OP: a 4 operator FM synth. The 4 operators are sent through a vector mixer which feeds a wave guide. This is followed by a filter and then a distortion unit.

PhysMo: Based on Karplus principals.

FX:

Grunger: An unique distortion algorithm paired with a ring modulator. The Modulation oscillator can be FM’ed by the incoming audio as well as an external source.

Warmth: A stereo filter and distortion unit

Brute: Another unique distortion algorithm with a filter that can be FM’ed by the input signal

Sat: A saturation unit with feedback and a filter

Compressor: A compressor with feedback

F Verb: A stereo frequency shifter with a primitive and ringy reverb algorithm

R Verb: A reverb algorithm with a frequency shifter in the feedback loop

Grain Delay: A granular delay processor

STD: A modulated stereo multitap delay, nice flanging and chorus effects.

Panner: A psychoacoustic automated panner. Can do a moderately successful rotating speaker emulation at higher rates

Quad Delay: A complex effect with 4 panned delays feeding into pitch shifter/granular delay. It needs a trigger source to trigger the envelope gating the delays. Mega feedback for the entire chain

Temporal Decorrelator: Requires a trigger. Randomly selects from a series of multiplications for the delay time. This can be stereo linked or unlinked.

Fuck: A looper and buffer manipulation effect. Capable of a wide range of glitch effects. Requires a gate.

Resonator: An 8 part bandpass filter array with global and individual cutoff controls. The filter bank is fed into a distorion.

Mixer:
The drums are fed into mixer channels 1-8. Each channel can be fed to 1-4 busses and up to 4 aux’s. It also has a 3 band eq and built in random automated panning available per track.

The 4 busses can also be sent to the 4 aux’s. Each of the 8 stereo returns and the Master have two selectable inserts which can load any of the FX algorithms.

The master section also has built in Low and High shelving EQ and a master compressor.

Sequencers:
There are 4 main sequencer modules with 2 supporting modulation modules.
Trig:
The main source of triggers and logic functions. There are two views on A and B that each show half the features. View A has Ch1-Ch4 trigger sources. The sequencer is controlled by the counter macro. This generates the pulse and index for the sequencer. It can count forward, backward, or use a probability source after x beats to determine direction. You can set start and length points as well as activate a remix function that plays with the counter according to two variables. The counter is also controlled by the rate and repeats macro above the triggers sequencer, and can take a gate signal to kill the pulse output, temporarily muting the pulse from that counter. The counter on View B can be synced to the Counter on View A

Ch1 and Ch3 (as well as Ch5 and Ch7 on the B view) have a second row to send the trigger to the trigger delays to the right. These can generate interesting fill patterns. They can also be used to set probability for specific steps rather than globally for the track.

The pulsar section is a bank of clock dividers with probability. This is the source for Trig1-4 and Coin 1-4 (5-8 on B view). The first divider from each bank can also be used to trigger a random number between 0 and X that can modulates the start position of the trigger sequencer.

The Swap macro takes an assignable trig source and randomly maps it to 4 or 2 separate outputs

The Map macro takes 4 assignable inputs and randomly chooses one to send to the output after x number of beats

The Hold macro takes a trigger and turns it into a gate of x beats in length

CV9-12:
This generates 4 related pitch CVs. It also has it’s own counter macro, but can be synced to either of the other counter macros or to LFO 1 and 2.

The values generated by the sequencer can be looped by an assignable gate signal. This value is fed into an automated transposer macro that chooses values to transpose the sequence to 4 separate (9-12) outputs. These are then fed into a secondary transposer module with an assignable trigger.

These values are then fed into another data looper which can be manually or automatically triggered.

These are then fed into a quantizer macro.

Finally, the 4 CVs have glide and vibrato applied to them according to the sequencer.

CV1-8:
Follows a similar architecture to CV9-12, but the seed values are generated by two Wiggle sequencers, a feedback network of summed and modulating LFO’s. It can be internally or externally clocked. You can also inject CV9 into the module to override the wiggle sequencers. This module also generates triggers whenever the quantizer selects a new value. In addition to the CV and Triggers, it also has two timer macros, which listen to incoming triggers or gates and decides to turn on or off a clock divider generator if it hasn’t received a trigger after x beats.

Entropy:
Generates 4 trigger signals (Trig10-13). It starts with 4 cells which are based on a network of 3 clock dividers. This source can be delayed by x beats. The first two and the second two are combined and routed by a gate sequencer to swap 1,2 and 3,4. On View B there are 4 channels of gated trigger delay for each of the 4 cells.

Longform:
This module has 8 trigger dividers with variable PWM. This signal can be used to gate an assignable trigger source. It also provides the logic and inverse signals from the gate to be used elsewhere. It also houses a final transposer macro that affects all the other CV sources. The first row injects into CV9, the second row into CV1 (wiggleSeq1) and the third row into CV 5 (wiggleSeq2). The fourth row is assignable. It also houses Map C and Map D

Modulation:
4 tempo syncable LFO’s and 2 Envlopes. It also has 2 comparators.

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and a quick demo of the new PhysMo synth

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Sounds great, really looking forward to the update

Thanks for the description, i am slooowly getting my Head around this.

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It’s great that you share this , i’m not sure i would do the same if i’ve Invested a lot of time , effort and plan to use it for my own releases.

I don’t think autechre will be releasing their patches any time soon …

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Not my usual stuff but I really like this. So aggressive. Don’t know much about Reaktor but super impressed that you’ve built something that generates this. Fantastic!!!

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I debated with myself for a while if I should or not. In the end I decided that since I was sharing it with my friends anyway, I might as well get it out there and I figured it was complex enough that a lot of people will open it once or twice and be too mystified to do much with it. I’ll always have my own personal version that has some of my secret sauce in it :zipper_mouth_face:

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ähh sorry but where is the BlankSlate Snapshot ?

In the update :dizzy_face:
Gonna be delayed a few days. Couldn’t get it wrapped before heading out of town for my Dad’s 70th bDay. Recording a band for the next few days, but will be able to focus on it after that.

Ah ok, thought i have overlooked it.

Easy to set up yourself if you don’t wanna wait for the update, just got through and turn all the synths and drums to off, then go through the fx inserts and turn them off. Bonus points if you clear out the sequencer data too. Save it as a new snapshot, should only take a few minutes

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Played my first show of this stuff last night, it went really really well with live modular synth on top. I’ll hopefully have more time to work on the update for Pulsar this week. It’s super close but there is an annoying bug that causes it to crash if loaded with the processing on. Have to turn processing off before loading and then turn it back on to get it to work. Shouldn’t be too much longer

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great news, really looking forward to the version

awesome banging Stuff.
where are you located where can i see you live ?
do you have a Facebook site to follow ?

Thanks! I live in Oakland California and play shows around here pretty regularly. Am willing to travel through :cowboy_hat_face:

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