KVR Audio

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:06 am

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*

Phase47 · Post by **Phase47** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:33 am

I think Numerology.

http://www.five12.com/

Shabdahbriah · Post by **Shabdahbriah** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:58 am

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.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 5:05 am

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

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 5:10 am

Shabdahbriah wrote: 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.

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

Caco · Post by **Caco** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:05 am

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

stimresp · Post by **stimresp** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:03 am

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

+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.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:39 pm

stimresp wrote:
Caco wrote:Take a look at Era2, it's not free but it is cheap and is well worth a look.
+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.

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

cytospur · Post by **cytospur** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 5:01 pm

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.

vieris · Post by **vieris** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:01 pm

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

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:37 pm

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!

Shabdahbriah · Post by **Shabdahbriah** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:18 pm

Sendy wrote:

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

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

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... &start=210

Yahoo group:

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

nix808 · Post by **nix808** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:39 pm

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

vata44 · Post by **vata44** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:01 am

Get into the tracker world...

Jeskola Buzz to be specific.

www.jeskola.net

It is free and steadily improving...

nix808 · Post by **nix808** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:11 am

Could these be a starting point?

Most fully functioned analog-style stepsequencer?