16 NOTES V2

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By Gooooose

When talking about sequencer, usually users or musicians will firstly think about Maximum step count as the fundamental capability of the device (eg. 8-steps vs 64-steps). However, if we look closely, a longer musical piece could usually be deconstructed into many different patterns with shorter length, or even subtle variations of the same pattern. A short pattern could be varied by change of timbre, velocity, emotion and time variations, in order to create a more sophisticated shape, or a consistent sonic illusion.

If we change time intervals in a 5-step loop and at the same time change velocity/timbres in a 4-step loop, the final sequence will loop in 20 steps. If combined with other variations, the end result will sound almost random but still reasonable to many listeners. This is a good example of the core concept of 16Notes: limitation leaves more space for controlled randomness.

Most importantly, many of the traditional sequencers have equal length for each step. But what if each step has different time length? Now with 16notes, you could finally do it! For us at sequencer electronics, this idea not only is interesting, but also could essentially save your time and your steps! It definitely changed the way how I think of sequencers.

Run:

The internal clock of 16Notes is tightly synced with Ableton live, simply run Ableton will start the sequencer. However, after several tweak on irregular triplet or dotted notes, the phase of the sequence might be shifted. To fix this, just stop and start Ableton again (spacebar!).

Functions of each section (part 0)

This interface will appear in the track once 16notes is loaded, it is the basic GUI control section.

The big GUI button will make the popup window appear any time you hit it.

the always on top button enable the pop up window to be always floating in front of Ableton Live, the same as when you using any third party plugin in Ableton. The popup window will keep floating there, regardless of which track you are currently editing. When this part is clicked and turned gray, the pop up window of the device will disappear once you hit area outside of the floating window. Don’t worry! You could always click the GUI button, or turn ”always on top” on again, or hit cmd+tab to make the popup window appear again.

The bottom gray area is for input track descriptions if you d like. This function is made to enable a fast edit when you have multiple devices running at the same time. Descriptions will appear on the title of the popup window. For example, you could type: this is track 1 and containing a 808 drumkit.

This section will remain the same for many other Max for Live devices made by Sequencer Electronics in the future.

Functions of each section (part 1)

  1. This is the Interval sequence, meaning, the height of each slide will change the interval for current step. When you drag each slider with mouse, section 2 and 3 will provide necessary visual feedback about which step you are currently editing and the value of the current editing step. Thin thin horizontal lines are reference for 1n-64n, dotted and triplets are in-between these lines.
  2. Indicator for which step you are currently editing
  3. Indicator for what the interval value is when you are currently editing
  4. Total step count of the current sequence, from 1 to 16. use mouse to increase/decrease the number, a single click here will make it possible to enter number from computer keyboard.
  5. Sequence running mode. Normal mode means the direction of the sequence will be determined by section 6. Random mode means each step will be randomly chosen by background algorithms. Serial mode is the most interesting one, which is a concept derived from serialism in music. In this mode, within a chosen length of sequence (section 4), each interval value will be used only once, in a random order. (Thinking of picking up 4 different colored balls from a urn without looking at them – each time you will pick them all out and then send them back.) After each interval is used, the cycle will restart again. By using serial mode, you are essentially creating fixed length patterns with fixed number of notes, however the order of each notes or intervals are purely random. At the bottom of this section, a number box let you control the randomness, eg. If your current step length is 4, and you type 1 in this section, when in serial mode, the sequence will start from the 1st step in every cycle, then serial the other 3 steps. This function sort of putting serialism into a more controlled situation, and might benefit more dance oriented music making.
  6. Direction of how the sequence will run in Normal mode. > is Forward, < is Backward, >< is Pendulum.
  7. Current interval indicator. This section is for visual reference only.
  8. This section is for controlling pitch offset for each step. As described in the core concept, more interesting result will come from when you set different total step count for the Interval sequence and Pitch sequence. For this section, the Height of each slide act as an offset of pitch. Originally this sequencer will fire out midi note 36, which is C1, and normally this will fire Kick Drum in a drum rack. The slider provide -4 to +16 semitones offset, so a full drum-set could easily be covered. It will also be handy to generate melodies within 20 semitones. The running mode and direction part is the same as the interval section.
  9. This section is for controlling Velocity for each step, ranging from 0-127. Note that 0 will usually mute the note or sometimes trig the release stage.
  10. This section is for modulating other parameters in Ableton. The height of each slider ranges from 0 to 127, simply click the Map button then click the parameter you would like to control. When you need to cancel the mapping, simply click the X button on the bottom-right of each section. The first two number-box under the Map button are for controlling the modulation range of the destination parameter. The number-box on their right is for controlling ramp time of the value of each steps, in millisecond. Eg. If this part is 50ms, it will take the value of each step 50 miliseconds to ”slide” into the next value, makes the change sounds more smoothly. The running mode and running direction functions are exactly the same as described above in other sections.
  1. This section provide a visual presentation of how the 3 modulation parts moves. Each of the modulation section controls the X, Y, Z movement of the sphere. You could easily see how ramp time affect the movement of the sphere here. This part is for fun and reference only. The small checkbox on the bottom-right of this section will disable the animation, thus could save a bit of computational power. Note that this section uses OPENGL and will run on your GPU.
  2. This is the Serial Lock section. Each of the toggle button represent the Interval, Pitch, Velocity and there Modulation sections. When you click each of the button, it will lock the sequencer into one selection of sequence if it is running in serial mode. Eg. When in serial mode, a sequencer might run like 1234 2341 2431 etc, if the current sequence is 2431, and you click the serial lock, the sequencer will keep running repeatedly in 2431, until you toggle the button off.
  3. This section provide you reference for the current total length of your pattern. Eg. If it says 4 1 1 1 4n 8n 16n, it means that the length of you current pattern is 4 4th, plus 1 8th, 1 16th, and 1 tick.
  4. Preset section. Hold SHIFT and Left Click each of the Square will save all current parameters to the preset. The Square will turn orange to indicate there is already a preset here. If any preset is saved, left click on the square will turn it to green, to indicate this is the current selected preset. Preset slot with nothing in will be gray. Hold SHIFT and Left Click on any slot already with preset will substitute the previous preset with current one.
  5. This is the command input section, meaning, instead of clicking and adjusting each section with mouse, you could also change every parameter of the whole device with command lines. All commands are listed as below:

    • adjust each slider

      l 1 4n : note Length (interval) column 1 set to 4n

      p 1 1 : Pitchoffsetcolumn1setto1

      v 1 127 : Velocity column 1 set to 127

      m1 1 127 : Modulation 1 column 1 set to 127

      m2 1 127 : Modulation 2 column 1 set to 127

      m3 1 127 : etc

    • adjust total step length: ll 5 : interval seq length set to 5 (ll = total step Length of note Length sequencer), pl, vl, etc, range 1-16
    • adjust each sequencers mode (0 normal 1 random 2 serial): lm, pm, vm - mode, range 0-2
    • adjust each sequencers running direction: ld, pd, vd - direction, range 0-2
    • adjust several parameters in one line: use ~ as separator. eg. try type: l 1 8n ~ l 2 4n ~ l 3 32n ~ l 4 16n
    • adjust serial lock: lk, pk, vk, m1k, m2k, m3k, range 0-1
    • save and recall preset: w 1 - write preset 1 / pre 1 - recall preset 1
    • adjust modulation slide time: m1s - modulation sequence ramp time in ms, same with m2s, m3s etc. eg. “m1s 50” will change ramp time of modulation1 to 50ms
    • quick set all to same value: la, pa, va - set all to a same value (eg. la 16n will set all interval to 1/16)
    • tab abort (so you can use keyboard to control other stuffs)
TIPS & TRICKS
  1. Easy Start: set up the interval sequence length to 2 steps, running mode to serial, set up the 1st step to be 8n and 2nd step to be 4n. Now you get a fixed length pattern (3/8), and the order of the 2 notes will constantly shifting.
  2. Game of Math: sequence length 5, interval 8n 16n 16n 8n 8n, in serial mode. A 1⁄2 bar loop with variations of rhythm.


$20