Recap!
Remember last week when I said I actively avoid math that requires even the slightest hint of wrinkling in the brain? I lied!
Turns out last week didn’t involve enough numerical suffering for me and, in fact, seems to have set in motion a new desire to actually learn how to math. A wild sentiment, and one that hopefully becomes a recurring theme in my who-knows-where-we-end adventures in audio development.
There was going to be a very fun, very interesting, certainly very different announcement that went along with the release of this next device, but I’ve been absolutely swamped by work as of late. The announcement is hereby postponed for the foreseeable future (at least a few weeks), but I’ll give you a hint as to what it entails.
So! The preamble is certainly gonna be quite a bit shorter this week, something I’m chalking up to a fleeting sense of wanting to show you folks that I do actually know some digital signal processing techniques. Such thinking falls into everyone’s favorite thought trap of self-doubt and feeds into a perpetual downward spiral of overall confidence, so go ahead and forget you read the italicized part of the last sentence. This is a feel-good blog, and if we’re doing anything short of getting a few muted snorts or slightly up-tilted, once-sided grins, we’re all going to hell.
Math, again
This is where I would put a gif (the g is soft, as in “good”) of a sign that reads “applause” lighting up. I know at least one of you does math for a living (this is a callout: Hi John!) and has likely come across the following concept conveyed with more verve sometime in their undergraduate past. This week, we’re working with euclidian rhythm!
Here’s the gist, which coincidentally is about all I’m able to confidently explain: you, dear reader and reluctant passenger in thiis trainwreck, want to generate a sequence of ons and offs, 1s and 0s, yes’ and no’s, as it goes. There are 2 typical variables that go into a list of 1s and 0s, and an additional twist that euclidian rhythms are particularly beloved for. A euclidian rhythm takes, for input, the length of the list, the number of 1s (and therefore 0s) in the list, and its rotation. A formula magically allocates the triggers as evenly as mathematically possible, resulting in all sorts of odd asymmetrical mayhem. Rotation determines the offset of the resulting list, with the general idea being that the list wraps around on itself and technically has no set beginning or end. The vibe here is that this sequence is, at its heart, a circle. For a comprehensible explanation, watch this video from this nice young man:
Alrighty, great, we can now, after a deep exhale and remembering to breathe, move on to the fun part:
live.alligater
This week’s device, live.alligater (not a typo, unlike most of this post), is a rhythmic gating effect. It takes an input signal and maps a sequence to the output volume of said input signal. The end result is something that minces absolutely anything into tangentially rhythmic bursts, with the amplitude directly correlating to the ons and offs of a euclidian rhythm of your choosing.
The device likewise comes with a rather large randomize button, and all parameters can be toggled on or off for value randomization simply by clicking on them. The color scheme on this one is reflective of the announcement that was to come this week, and is one that will likely be making a return in the future. A fun little tidbit: live.alligater is more-or-less a port of an experimental effect built for polyMorph, and it certainly won’t be the last. Though the next will likely be an instrument (here’s another cryptic hint for you).
Wrap-up!
As always, stay tuned for whatever comes next and, and I’m endlessly grateful to all of you readers and users out there making this little project into, for me, a little something more than just a hobby!