[bgParticipant]

Earlier in this thread some folks expressed interest in Roland 185/Ryk/metropolis style ratcheting (number of ratchets dictates step duration) and I also am in the camp that prefers this style. Though I’m currently without a zaquencer, I was trying to think of a workaround to achieve an approximation of this style.

If For the track in question, MIDI A is set to ratcheting, and MIDI B is set to control clock divider (is that possible?) then we should be able to fake Roland ratcheting no?

I’m imagining that you could set the clock division per step to make room for however many ratchets you want.

Thinking about it more tho, I think this method does not provide the full flexibility of the the Roland method when it comes to setting an odd number of ratchets per step – you couldn’t match the timing of the Roland sequencer using only even clock divisions.

So, I guess my questions are: would the above method work?

And

Are there any feasible developments that could help us more closely approximate the ratcheting style of the Roland sequencer? Perhaps additional odd numbered clock divisions?

[bgParticipant]

To piggy back off this FR, if a software version is made, I’d love it if it could pull double duty as a graphic editor of sorts for the hardware zaquencer.

On the zaq I find if I load an old pattern set, sometimes it’s difficult to recall all the settings and steps I had previously programmed without letting the thing play and flipping thru the modes and menus. It’d be cool if there was a software GUI that could present all that pattern info at a glance.

[bgParticipant]

+1 this would be good

[bgParticipant]

Bump ?

[bgParticipant]

I’m operating under the assumption that in drum tracks we are still limited to the global track seq length – So can’t offset just be handled by the global seq step offset parameter? Or are we envisioning variable offset for each single drum instrument?

Kieran’s idea seems great tho. What if we had a lookup table that was indexed according to global seq length, ‘euclid offset knob’ and ‘euclid step knob’?

so this lookup table would have hundreds of entries, but would be first narrowed down by the value of global seq length. From here you would have available all patterns that distribute x amount of steps over the amount of steps defined by glob seq length as well as all offsets of these. now if we had a dedicated ‘euclid step knob’ you would turn it to sort through the lookup table by number of note-ons per seq.

say you set ‘euclid step knob’ to 3, and global seq length is 8. you’ve now narrowed the lookup table to only [x..x..x.] and all its offsets. from here just turn the dedicated ‘euclid offset knob’ to select one single final entry from the lookup table.

This makes sense to me, but i just woke up so maybe its nonsense lol, yall can decide

• This reply was modified 9 years, 2 months ago by  bg.

[bgParticipant]

+1 the first idea

[bgParticipant]

Thanks for the follow up Christian, I totally get that it would be out of scope, but thanks for fielding the FR. If you ever do it as a separate project, I’ll be in line for #001!

And thanks Tommy for the tip on the LXR, looks cool

[bgParticipant]

+1 this would be huge

[bgParticipant]

And Christian, FWIW, this functionality would be something I’d definitely be willing to pay $$ for. like i said, it’d be the only option on the market

[bgParticipant]

The additive waveshaper is cool and all, I just don’t think it would represent much of an improvement over conventional sequencing – in terms of legwork/number crunching – when it comes to working with euclidean rhythms. What you’re describing does sound fun though

[bgParticipant]

thats a cool idea, but the math wont work out to euclidean patterns if its just applying an lfo.

a tresillo rhythm (one of the most common rhythms that can be generated w/ the euclidean algorithm) is [x..x..x.]

Over 16 bars, that looks like this:

x..x..x.x..x..x.

which you couldn’t generate from regular oscillation.

and ideally a fully functional sequencing architecture would allow way more control than just an lfo would allow, e.g., you have a sequence that distributes 3 hits over 8 steps, and you turn a knob to increase or decrease the number of hits being distributed – so if you turned the knob between 3 and 4, you’d alternate between a tresillo and 4-to-the-floor

[bgParticipant]

ah interesting, will try

[bgParticipant]

+1 for something along these lines, even a “copy/paste next 4/8/16 steps” function or something

[bgParticipant]

Cool, the FR’s you described sound like they’d be great. If they were implemented, would overdub mode be possible at least in drum mode? since each note-step is on one of sixteen subtracks? that would allow the user to say, play a tricky hi-hat pattern against a kick-snare beat already in the pattern. My thinking was that overdub might also be of use in chord mode, even though its monophonic, since it would allow for example the user to program in multiple passes a funky, syncopated bassline which would be difficult or impossible to play in a single pass. Would that functionality be feasible? As always, thanks for everything!

[bgParticipant]

Ah ok that makes sense, thanks

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