KVR :: Instruments » Most fully functioned analog-style stepsequencer? [View Original Topic]
There are 34 posts in this topic.

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Sendy - Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:06 pm

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So far I've found ClockWOrK by WOK which is pretty good, but are there any good freeware ones around? I'm NOT looking for something designed to make static 2-bar loops, but rather something that'll let me make Tangerine Dream esque evolving sequences where notes are added, removed, random skipping can be brought in via probability, playdirection can change, notes can be transposed (preferably forced to scale/mode as an option), pattern can be shifted in time, etc. The more realtime sequence tweaking, the better!

ClockWOrK has a lot of these functions but I'm wondering what else is out there. Hopefully freeware but will spend money if I have to

EDIT: I found this 5 minutes after making this post:

http://tubeohm.com/TubeOhm/Stepper_XL.html

Looks like it has everything I want!

EDIT: It has almost everything... It's missing a "skip step" flag for each step, and shifting the sequence forwards and backwards, plus a couple of other wacky ideas I want Apart from that, good show!

Mods, feel free to delete this post, or we can talk about stepsequencer solutions or something? *shrug*

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Phase47 - Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:33 pm

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I think Numerology.

http://www.five12.com/

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Shabdahbriah - Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:58 pm

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I like WOK's ClockWOrK, but was going to hip you to "Stepper"... Nice huh?

For a little 'spice' in pursuing those "Tangerine Dream esque evolving sequences":

HyperCyclic

Then, a bit more esoteric:

Noatikl

There are a number of others, but I'm not at my main DAW at the moment, to have my memory sufficiently jogged, so I'll come back when I'm home.

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Sendy - Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:05 pm

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Numerology is something I might want to look into in the future, as an alternate environment.

I've ordered the TubeOhm plugin and am 85% happy with what it can do, but I'm really suprised there isn't a stepsequencer solution out there that lets you do every kind of alteration to the pattern you can think of in realtime, sort of like every sequence management feature ever thought up included in it.

If I could program I'd get on it as I have a few ideas

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Sendy - Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:10 pm

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Thanks for the suggestions! Noatikl looks a bit *too* out there for my purposes, but HyperCyclic is really getting me excited at first glance

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Caco - Thu Feb 16, 2012 12:05 am

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Take a look at Era2, it's not free but it is cheap and is well worth a look.

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stimresp - Thu Feb 16, 2012 1:03 am

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+1 though the interface is far from intuitive at first - stick with it because (surprisingly) it's still by far the most powerful VST step sequencer on Windows.

I often yearn for a 32 step version though. Thesys is no replacement.

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Sendy - Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:39 am

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Anyone know where I can actually *buy* Era2? The shop on their website just forwards me onto Sugar Bytes and says they're selling it. But... They don't mention Era2 on their site at all! They have some similar product called Thesys which looks pretty good, but it doesn't seem to have all the features that Era2 had.

EDIT: Well, with a bit of googling around I've found it. It appears to be on the Sugar Bytes site, but it doesn't seem to be linked from their products, shop or other pages (strange). If it is, they did a good job of hiding it

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cytospur - Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:01 am

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You might also want to take a look at nodal:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~cema/nodal/index.html

It's not a VST, but it can integrate with your sequencer of choice very easily using something like MIDI Yoke. The patterns you create can be as rigid or random as you design them to be. You can even have different sequences triggered by note on messages from your host, which when set up correctly with a loop back device, to send a MIDI stream to your host. The free version doesn't save any patches that you make, but you can still stream and record the MIDI and get a good feel for if it is for you. Upgrade to saving patches is $30.

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vieris - Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:01 am

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Bidule can do just about anything you need in this dept.

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Sendy - Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:37 am

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Thanks for all the suggestions! In the end I decided to cover all my bases with both Stepper XL and ERA2 (which I haven't had a proper play with yet, but sounds amazing). The other software looks really interesting, and might be something I get into later.

I don't know what's triggered this sudden interest in step sequencing and semi-procedural generation, but there's a whole bunch of really interesting stuff out there. I'm imagining a synthline where the octave, note and filter sequences are all different length polyrhythms that interfere and weave around eachother, and then being able to delete, add and change the duration of notes arbitrarily...

By the way, is the KVR "random hourly plugin" thingy listening in on me? It's showing me nothing but sequencing and midi/arping tools at the moment

Final thought: I found this on youtube while I was researching this stuff... It's pretty impressive!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDZUUOKuL0Y&list=LLn7fs0CVRBIg2GqV5W0l1fg&index=2&feature=plpp_video

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Shabdahbriah - Thu Feb 16, 2012 3:18 pm

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Most recent KVR [started "conceptualizing" here in '06 IIRC] thread:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=280406&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=210

Yahoo group:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/zyklusimprovisor/

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nix808 - Thu Feb 16, 2012 3:39 pm

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I am interested in this,
and can develop a little bit.
I have MAX/msp,
SynthMaker & Usine.
I have developed a monophonic stream sequencer w/-arp,
which is sample accurate and has 64 patterns,
and sequencers for slide, velocity and pan-
Also a polyhonic MIDI sequencer with 32 patterns & 128 steps.
It has a setting which provides maximum 8 samples error.
I want to build a generative machine,
using the devices from these 2.
So yeah, I'm interested in ur ideas.
Do u want to start building something?
I'd rather not promise to have something quickly though.
brb, I'll get screens of my sequencers

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vata44 - Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:01 pm

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Get into the tracker world... Jeskola Buzz to be specific.

www.jeskola.net

It is free and steadily improving...

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nix808 - Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:11 pm

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Could these be a starting point?

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ENV1 - Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:24 pm

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Check this out:

http://www.klangmanipulation.de/indexvst.html

If you like ClockWOrK and TO-Stepper youre gonna love this one because it has a lot more features.

To get a good idea of what it can do, just watch the video.

Pay special attention to the part that starts at 14:00, where he introduces the PATCH-O-MATOR.

So far i havent seen anything better for free...

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synthgeek - Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:39 pm

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This looks cool, thanks for the heads-up.

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pdxindy - Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:59 pm

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I find the probability stuff unfulfilling. In the course of running some iterations it does some cool changes and ones I don't like. After trying such stuff out I found I preferred to craft stuff by hand.

I quite like the song mode in Geist...

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Sendy - Thu Feb 16, 2012 5:11 pm

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#

Looks like a good starting point, yes!

How I envision it is like this. Bear with me because I'm using paint and a mouse



I think that expresses the basic idea... It's like a stepsequencer where each row of information has it's own ranges and playmode. It should be easy to drop any value into any gridspace, change playmodes, set all tracks to start/end at a certain step, edit everything, and there'd be every editing feature possible on the raw data, such as shifting it left/right.

Ideally there should be 16 or 32 steps, but I didn't draw them And there would be also lanes for CC modulation, and a smoothing and scaling parameter for each CC lane. There could also be columns for standard pitchbend gestures as well!

Perhaps each row could also have it's own clock divider? That might have it's own problems, though...

Regarding Mute and Skip, these are at the top to symbolize that they would be the first thing the program checks. Basically if it lands on a lit Skip step, it jumps immediately to the next state, so it's basically like folding that part of time out of existence . Obviously then the program would look at the mute status and if that was lit, it would do a rest, etc...

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nix808 - Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:16 pm

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hmm,
do you have FL Sendy?
We could work on this in FLSM,
clocked by Usine/FL.
The project could be wrapped as a VST by Usine,
when it is finished.
I can't see a clock-divider per line as being too difficult 8D
Sounds like a cool project.
Cheers

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abstractcats - Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:45 pm

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http://tonecarver.wordpress.com/nova3-generative-sequencer-vst/

Don't know if any one has posted this, its really nice!

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xuoham - Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:07 am

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Interesting post ...

My try at the same kind of concept three years ago :

http://plogue.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3427

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Sendy - Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:31 pm

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I'm afraid I don't, and I don't know what use I'd be beyond an ideas and testing person, since I can't code or anything. I've had a few more ideas, such as being able to apply transforms to the note data, and being able to force the output to a set of keys perhaps via a midi channel or something.

I spend a long time 'inflecting' riffs so that they don't clash in keychanges, and I think anything that can speed this up, is a great tool

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Shabdahbriah - Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:35 am

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A couple interesting (IMO) sequencers, that have slipped under the radar, perhaps:

http://www.gradywerks.com/index.htm

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SQ4 - Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:04 am

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www.raxntrax.com ! It's a free vst-host based on analog style sequencers but with a lot more functionality.

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abstractcats - Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:16 am

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Looks very good, requires a donation, but there seems to be pay what you want. I'll give it run this week.

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abstractcats - Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:26 am

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Ah! I just checked your sig. and web info, I assume, you are the dev? This looks really nice, I'll check it and "become a member" soon, thanks

EDIT: Oops! I'm a jackass I just got it! Thanks

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Frantz - Sun May 06, 2012 11:05 pm

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Rax'n'Trax is brilliant! Even better than the step sequencers in the Emu Command Station. It took me a couple of days to figure out the basic functionality but it was worth the effort. You have to watch the YouTube videos to understand it. I sent a nice donation.

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pdxindy - Sun May 06, 2012 11:30 pm

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And if you are serious about complex step sequencing, Numerology is unbeatable!

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Frantz - Sun May 06, 2012 11:38 pm

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But Numerology is Mac only.

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zappadave - Mon May 07, 2012 12:13 am

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http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=95841
Maybe worth getting Reaper for?

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pdxindy - Mon May 07, 2012 3:23 am

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For someone who really wants to dig into that functionality, it may be worth getting a Mac for it.

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braj - Mon May 07, 2012 4:36 am

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It's not your traditional step sequencer, but Chris Kerry's Pattern Arp Plus is so incredible and if you are looking for something that can have evolving patterns and be incredibly dynamic it is tops IMO.

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osiris - Mon May 07, 2012 5:13 am

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CK's stuff is top notch.

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There are 34 posts in this topic.