I have loved the Korg Volca Beats very much in my life. I am curious if there is some sort of MIDI stutter effect similar to what the volca beats has? I suppose I could put something together in Max/MSP/Jitter (i made something that sends bangs based on the CC numbers that those knobs send, pretty close to in sync) but was curious if there was something a bit more professional-grade
Biggest issue for me is deciding exactly what it does. Sometimes I’ll get great results but other times it seems like it is just a delay with high feedback.
I’ve been trying to create this type of nonsense in various MIDI tools for most of a decade and while I’m not sure what “professional grade” means, I can assure you there are many ways to skin this cat. Some examples:
- Max/MSP (as you mentioned) / SuperCollider / VCVRack / certainly others
- Reaper MIDI scripting
- NodeJS / Python (slowly
) / Clojure / whatever with MIDI bindings - Good old DOM-based JavaScript on the web… possibly in the browser you are reading this on right now
- C / C++ w/ RtMidi
- Some BohmBox / Squarp / Norns fancy hardware sequencer/processor type thing
- Something like a Nord Lead 2 that can send MIDI w/ its echoes/arps
- The humble Digital Music MX-8 and probably a few other patchbays from the late 80s or early 90s
The gist of it is:
- Keeping track of the notes being played and their intervals
- Getting the velocity for the next echo (via subtraction/division/whatever)
- Scheduling the next echo (i.e. report back in 100ms)
- Repeating steps 2 and 3
- Knowing when to stop scheduling (i.e. when velocity dips below 1 or you’ve heard enough echoes to be sick of it)
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Thanks, in my original message i meant to include a 
I reckon I should just fix up my max-msp code and everything should be good, just trying to be aware if such a magical device exists in the case that I want to escape from my computer during music making escapades.
Another option - that I’ve considered because I also really like the active step feature - would be to add a MIDI output to your Volca Beats. I read somewhere it was pretty straightforward if you own a soldering iron. Supposedly, holes are already bored in the PCB and labeled appropriately.
Oh yeah I added a midi output from the volca beats that is how i get the CC info to max/msp (well the volca beats hooked up to a midi interface to my computer). It is very straight forward, I modded my volca sample as well. It’s 3 wires, 6 solder points that are defined on the PCB. Like the 2nd thing I’ve soldered in my life was really easy.
Unfortunately the midi note echo data from the stutter effect is not sent (that was one of my original intents with the midi mod).
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