A couple of long notes were done by manually playing a couple of long chords the OP-1 in the same key that as the Zillion sequence.
The ‘Rhythm’ page has three gate types. One of those is “S/H” which “allows note-off (rests), note-on with 50% duration, or sustained notes to occur.”
So it does allow for longer notes to happen, but I haven’t found the best settings for this yet. I’ve gotten it to generate them, but not as often as I’d like so far. But I just need to do some more experimenting.
I understand.
I think that you will have long hours discovering your MnM and MD, before integrating the Zillion. Take time, long progression but full reward.
I have two of these and think they are great. They are a fantastic addition to your setup. Really fun to play with. I got two so I can run them at the same time and have two melodies that constantly change and evolve. I plan to creating a live video performance.
Oh nice.
Did you make a similar programmation on each so the two melodies run together in real combination of notes with no shocking between them. I mean : do the result is really sonically of quality?
yes, I think they sound great running at the same time. I have not had issues with clashing notes or anything like that
Demo of two at the same time
Only having one, something I’ve found useful is to use the Zillion to populate other sequencers. I’ve done this a couple of times with the Monomachine but have found it especially useful with things like the Volca Keys. I’ve found it a good way to populate the Volca without an external keyboard and without trying to play its little touch-keyboard. Then I go in and record some motion sequencing or set different speeds on the Volca’s sequencer to get more variation; then I can use the Zillion on a device like the Dave Smith Evolver and play long and evolving Zillion sequences on it and use the Volca as accompaniment.
And since the Volca Keys is polyphonic, a couple of passes with the monophonic Zillion into a single Volca sequence can yield some nice chord structures.
It’s also good with an Elektron box to help generate a melody that you can then go in and expand upon with parameter locks.
Hey Mind robber,
Thanks for having take time to reccord this long demo.
indeed two makes a good algorythmic combo. I understand well the fact that these instruments have to be played in view to obtain nice progression. But I do agree with Jshell too, about picking pattern to feed Elektron gear.
The two ways are satisfying.
Nice little machines
Holy cow. Zillion on Monomachine’s Multi-trig channel is amazing! Some selective use of monomachine track muting (including a BBOX track), some mild tweaking of the Zillion’s various settings, and you can have a lot of fun with just those two boxes!
Marvellous !!
This kind of message awake my gas for Zillion. I just don’t buy one few days ago.
I must not be subdue by the Syrens of Zillion 
Thanks for sharing
Must admit that multitrig is one of my favourite trick on mono. Not surprise to learn that it’s efficient with Zillion.
Happy guy, havFun
Edit : makes me think that I didn’t practice it with Pyramid. I’ll do that tonight. Yesterday I was lost with drones on MnM. Very, very cool night :))
Finally I bought one !
Will have it in two days ! It will be a good friend for my Elektron MnM and my Pyramid.
Very impatient to be in weekend to test it.
I’m so glad I can finally share this track! This is pretty much all Zillion. The two main tracks in it are Monomachine kits I set up for the Zillion and run via the multi-trick MIDI channel on the Monomachine. The kits had a bit more velocity-mapping set up than normal to take advantage of the one extra generative value the Zillion can throw your way. The drums are (obviously) Monomachine bbox drums.
It’s augmented by some extra tracks, especially later, from the Novation Circuit where I recorded from the same basic Zillion pattern into the Circuit’s sequencer and then did some minor tweaks (mostly just dropping some notes) and at the very end one of those sequences from the Circuit is used to play the OP-1 and Circuit together.
Resulting in a pretty decent ambient piece, I think.
Yes, cool piece.
Now I can appreciate the Zillion generative way of music. I like a lot the ambiance that this little beast thrown in your work.
I like the general flavor of your song, even if I wouldn’t have use so many sounds played at the same time, I think i would have lay them more in the time. But this just my point of view, reflect of my taste, not the truth.
I do understand your noisy and experimental way of music, I like it. The only thing I would really change is the bbox sound, that I don’t really like on MnM (taste, one more time).
Thank for sharing this. I will share my work as soon as I can record my gear.
old thread, but popping in for two reasons - I have a Zillion for sale:
Zillion
but I’ve also spent a lot of time probing how the Rhythm menu stuff works and how the counters and shift register work, so if folks have questions, feel free to ask and maybe I can shed some light so that using the Zillion feels less random.
A mini Merlin style “Thoughts on” would be truly enlightening if you could be bothered… obviously, I jest but any explanations into how you have interpreted the shift register would be gratefully recieved as it really is a mystery and complete game of chance for me.
Cheers.
The Shift Register (SR) can be thought of a string of 0’s and 1’s with a total length of 32 positions. At any given time, you can select the current value from the Shift Register using S01 → S032 as an input to something.
I always try to start with the zero/base case and get more complicated from there. If you set up a very basic thing:
Major scale,
Melody: Off, Off, Off, Off
Rhythm: On, Off, 228, GT1
Theme: Off, Off, Off, Off
Shift 01
you will hear a repeating C 2 note. If you change Melody to: On, Off, Off, Off you’ll hear a D 2 note.
If you change Melody to use a counter: C01, Off, Off, Off, you’ll hear an alternating C2 D2 pattern because the C01 position changes from 0 to 1 to 0, etc every 16th note. In the same way C02 in that first position would toggle every second 16th note.
The Melody input is 3 positions plus a 4th transpose position. Using binary math positions 1,2,3 can generate a number between 0 and 7 so depending on what you put in those 3 slots that will determine the sequence of numbers generated. C01, C02, C04 is a straight counter from 0 to 7 and then starts over at 0 (reading lowest bit on left, highest - most significant on right):
0 0 0
1 0 0
0 1 0
1 1 0
0 0 1
1 0 1
0 1 1
1 1 1
So far, so good.
Everything is read (and then updated) every 16th note (a few minor exceptions for Rhythm 32nd notes and count C.5). The shift register is read first, new values are computed, the shift register is shifted over one position, and a new value is put in position 1. The value shifted out of position 32 (last spot) is just discarded.
So if you use a shift register instead of a counter: S01, Off, Off, Off for Melody, the Zillion will read whatever value is sitting in shift register slot 1 and use it to pick the next note. In the first position for Melody, you’ll only choose between C2 and D2 since the value will be 0 or 1.
The Shift Register is populated by logic operations on the 4 inputs. The manual states inputs 1 and 2 are processed and 3 and 4 are processed and then the results of those two operations are processed to decide whether to put a 1 or a 0 into the beginning of the shift register. Standard computer/circuit logic (remember this was loosely based on the Tridex Muse which did the computation using hardware logic gates) is AND, OR, XOR and the negation of them - NAND, NOR, NXOR. Wikipedia has some nice entries and you can see the result of applying one of these logic operations on inputs 0/0, 0/1, 1/0, and 1/1. So when you pick a number between 1 and 36 in the Shift Register menu you are selecting which logic operations are applied to the 4 inputs you selected in the Theme menu. (one logic operation is applied to Theme inputs 1,2 and 3,4 and a second logic operation is applied to the results of those two operations). So you might be selecting XOR XOR, AND NOR, or any of the other 34 combinations. Jered knows what number maps to what pair of logic operations, but if you were extremely diligent and set the Theme inputs to Off, Off, Off, Off and selected 1->36 in the SR menu and then went back and changed the Theme inputs to On, Off, Off, Off, Off (etc) you’d eventually be able to map out what they were.
If the inputs to the Theme menu are static On/Off values, the answer is static and you’d get Shift Register slot 1 populated with the same 0 or 1 forever. The fun comes in using counters for one or more inputs so you are changing what gets fed into Slot 1 of the SR. That will provide a regular pattern of 1’s and 0’s as input which will (eventually) generate a repeating pattern of notes (if the SR is used in the Melody input section). If you choose to create a feedback path by using a SR slot output as a Theme input, then that injects a value that isn’t part of the pattern periodically. For example, if the Theme input is C01, C02, Off, Off, and you use S03, S05, S08 as inputs to the Melody you’ll eventually hear a repeating pattern of notes. If you change the Theme inputs to C01, C02, S17, Off a different, more complex pattern will be generated. You can write code if you’re so inclined to see the patterns or you can record the note outputs into a DAW/sequencer and take a look/listen to the new pattern.
more to follow…
Love it, I’ll be honest in that I have owned the zillion and used it for years and have an idea of what the various settings will do in terms of results but have not seen it clearly on WHAT they are doing.
Assume the Shift Register (SR) starts with all 0’s in the 32 slots. If you use something like C01, C02, C08, C02 for the 4 Theme inputs, you will generate a pattern of length 16 before it repeats. How do I know 16? You take the Least Common Multiple of the 4 counter values and then multiply that by 2, so the LCM of 1,2,8 is 8 * 2 = 16. If your numbers were C01, C02, C03, C05, the pattern length would be the LCM of 1,2,3,5 = 30 * 2 = 60. As you can see, using prime numbers and large odd numbers can dramatically increase the length of a pattern before it repeats.
Going back to 1,2,8,2. If you pick a high Shift Register number (I think 36), the pattern will be something like: 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0. These values will get stuff into the SR one at a time for each 16th note pulse:
1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
1,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
1,1,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
1,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
0,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
1,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,...
0,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,...
and so on. So by picking any single slot of the SR to use as an input, you’ll eventually see the repeating pattern come out. Picking 2 or more SR slots to use and you’ll generate what initially looks like a random string of numbers, but will eventually resolve itself into a pattern.
other tricks - use a custom scale and load in the same value more than once to weight that note value more heavily. Works great if you pick notes that trigger a drum machine’s instruments (for example) and you can generate complex but repeating drum patterns.
The Rhythm menu only has 2 inputs, so you can only generate 4 different values. GT1 and S/H only support 3 different values, so the middle one of each is twice as likely to occur (50% 16th note). Since there’s 256 choices of density, what I do is pick a density, then set the first two values to C01, C02 and listen for the variety I want while changing the Density value and then use counters/hard values, or the SR to vary those first 2 in various ways.
This is fantastic my friend!
MetalFalcon summed it up quite beautifully in his reply above as your explanations have really helped me get my head around WHAT is actually occurring.
Profoundly apprecitative for taking the time to share the knowledge you’ve gained… especially as you’re in the process of selling it.
Many thanks indeed.