My Step Sequencer ideas

[doremifa]

So.. me, like I guess many of you, want to have the best SS around. I have tons of ideas but I am an absolute zero in programming and don’t have any plans for mastering it – too many other things to get in already. So what I want is.. to give all my ideas away for ppl who are interested:


1. Colored beats. Every type of beat has it’s own characteristic sound. This can be detected by the SS itself or pointed out/changed by user with simple right click. Kicks, snares, HH, open HH, perc and etc.

2. Chopping the beats. Extended Live chopping where you can see pre chopped version of the loop with the markers and correct them before chopping, or fine the setting and see how the detection changes the loop chopping accuracy. Incorporates the same mechanism of beat type detection so the pre-chopped would have colors according to same scheme – that would be very easy to get for the eye.

3. Articulation FX. Very similar to such effects in Battery – flam, roll, buzz, drag and etc. Not just retriggering, which is good for trance/house/other electronic music but not for hip-hop/break beat stuff, and stuff than incorporates real drum sounds. Single sound applied. This is essential.

4. 16 slots (2 rows of 8 knobs) for FX which can be ANY fx you want (from internal Live to any VST) and could be applied to ANY single beat in the groove, OR a group of sounds by color/type. Easily put the fx in the rack and it will appear there, corresponding to the rack number. Could use presets of ready to use FX with built-in Ableton effects.


5. Drum editor/notation view. Very useful stuff for drum programming. When you can put notes like a drummer would, using sheet music. It is very easy for ones brain to program such beats and read the existing one, specially if you a have a drummer background. The beat type detection algorithm would be again used to distinguish sounds and translate them into “notation view”. With ability to edit/put down your grooves like this:


6. Add presets for drum editor/notation view, so it can correctly read all most popular plug-ins MIDI maps: BFD, EZ Drummer, iMAP, GM, Superior, etc. That’s another way of using it apart from your own sounds – with ready to use drum kits, that don’t need to be detected, but correctly mapped.

7. Advanced editing tools for SS. With a dedicated tool for following: if I want to copy that sound with the exact step between the next one, or a pattern that consist of several steps of different sounds, after I have already drawn one, so there is no need for monotonous repeating. Kind of clone stamp tool from photoshop variation.

8. Variation constructor. Filling in the stuff after the user adds basic groove from kick and snare or similar. With some options to tinkle, where you can choose 8th or 16th pattern, hihats or cymbals and etc. Some sliders you can tweak and press a big RANDOMISE button after.

9. Scene sequencer. Every groove pattern is a scene. This gives ability to map them to midi keyboard (or APC/Launchpad) to playback them later with. Another similar to main SS window here just for sequencing scenes. Different colors for fills. More ideas about this one are coming.

10. Ability to name sounds / extract their names from sound file names even through vst’s like Kontakt, Batter, etc.


added: single line ideas


1. More than 1 beat on 1 step (unlike the current SS coming with Live)
2. Ability to open in a floating window
3. Hardware integration (monomes, launchpad, apc)

So here it is! Tell what you think.

[simpli.cissimus]

Reason Matrix - MAX4Live clone...!!!

[citric_acid]

I like the novation lunchpad sequencer ... but some things witch i can´t implement because im just start to learn programming:

1. Polyphonic step sequencing ( more than this 1 note per step)
2. different ways to play the sequence ( forward / Back / Pendelum / One shot )
3. that you can use more than one Sequencer patch with this Lounchpad, than this one .

[monohusche]

@doremifa:

interesting stuff, I am working on a monome-enabled step sequencer which was initially based on the CS Step Sequencer which comes with M4L.

just some questions:

1. coloured beats...what do you mean by that ? even the cs step sequencer allows you to sequence multiple individual sounds (e.g. kicks, snares etc.) by triggering an Impulse or a drum rack.

2. Chopping beats...not sure whether would/should be placed into a step sequencer. Typically, a step sequencer triggers notes (=sounds/samples) which ultimately create your audio. why would you want to chop up a note stream (=MIDI clip) ?

3. Articulation FX...that's an interesting topic. sorry I am not a drummer, how would you define those (flams, roll, buzz etc.) if not by retriggering ? what does "single sound applied" mean ?

altogether, I think, a lot of the ideas could be implemented by the modular Live environment already, such as applying effects to the beats by using drum racks.

but maybe I am not thinking along your lines, so let me know.

cheers, nick

[doremifa]

1. coloured beats...what do you mean by that ? even the cs step sequencer allows you to sequence multiple individual sounds (e.g. kicks, snares etc.) by triggering an Impulse or a drum rack.

I mean like in Guru - different group of sounds have their distinguished colors. Kicks - blue, Snares - red, Hats - yellow, etc. The intensity of a color represents velocity.

Chopping beats...not sure whether would/should be placed into a step sequencer. Typically, a step sequencer triggers notes (=sounds/samples) which ultimately create your audio. why would you want to chop up a note stream (=MIDI clip) ?

That is very simple. You need that when you have a loop you want to deconstruct and then reconstruct\create variations. Or extract pattern from it. I have tons of loops I could use for that. Would be clever to add to a code for tracing delays - that's a common problem of such loop slice detectors.

Articulation FX...that's an interesting topic. sorry I am not a drummer, how would you define those (flams, roll, buzz etc.) if not by retriggering ? what does "single sound applied" mean ?

That is taken straight from the Battery. They all give a different effect aside from retrigger which is just splitting the beat on equal parts. Roll sounds more like a real drummer roll with less roll at the beginning and more trill at the peak and than fades. So it is much more "alive" rather then mechanical retrigger sound. Roll has volume velocity starting as less loud. Than it rises, as the intensity of the speed a little. I am sure you have heard real rolls, don't you?

about FX - yes, it could be done with Live, BUT you should fasten it in a specific way, so it could be applied to a single beat in SS pattern or group of beats (kicks, snare, hats, etc).

Glad you've been interested Nick! I hope my explanations made it more clear to you

[monohusche]

no worries, I am building my own step sequencer (MonoMIDI), but I am not sure whether it will be as deep as your ideas.

And I know what you meant by chopping beats (slicing the audio). My question was rather why that should be part of the sequencer. I mean all M4L devices live within Live, and Live8 already comes with inbuilt loop slicing ("Slice to Midi"). The created drum rack can, on the other hand, can be easily be used for step sequencing the slices to create variations.

Extraction of pattern (e.g. groove) is also supported by Live already.

Regarding fx application to a single beat...not sure what you mean by this. A single beat as in the second quarter note of this bar, or a single beat = the kick sound. In both cases, there is ways to do that. With drum racks, obviously you can put whole effect chains behind every single sound in your rack, so the processing of kicks would be totally different from processing snares.

If you want to apply fx only at specific times, you can use clip envelopes to trigger that. There is also a bunch of M4L parameter modulation device (e.g. MonoParaSteppa -->http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device.php?id=169) which allow you to place effects directly on specific steps.

the articulation stuff is definitely not supported out of the box by Live, and was on my to-do list for MonoMIDI, so I will look into this. thx

nick