SEQ

Alone

Patch a chord into POLY IN and a clock into CLK, and OUT plays its notes, one per tick. Each channel of the cable is a step, read live, so the chord can change as it plays. A CLK bonded on the SEQ's left can be the clock instead of a cable; the SEQ still arpeggiates POLY IN. Bonded to a POLY on its left, with nothing in POLY IN, it arpeggiates the POLY's chord.

1. Direction forward, pendulum or reverse; click for the next
2. Step the playhead; drag to hold or pick a step
3. Rate steps per clock tick
4. Pie click to free the rate from whole steps
5. Mode PLAY, HALT or ONCE; PREVIEW too over CV faders, CRVs, QNTs and ATNs
6. POLY IN the chord to arpeggiate
7. CLK a clock, one step per tick at rate x1
8. RATE +1 V doubles the rate, -1 V halves it
9. RESET back to step one
10. PHASE the playhead by voltage
11. EOC fires as each pass begins, the first one included
12. Slew light: glide from step to step
13. BLEP light: band-limited jumps
14. Oversampling light: for audio rate
15. OUT the sequence

A pass is once through the steps; on pendulum, there and back. Bonded, the top jack and OUT take new labels by what the SEQ steps through (see Bonded); this page keeps calling them the top jack and OUT.

Bonded

Atomic modules pushed edge to edge bond into one rig. The steps of a SEQ are the nearest block to its left, modules of one kind side by side: CV faders, CRVs, TRGs, QNTs or ATNs, up to 255. On the way it passes over any CLK, SEQ or MIX, so four CVs, a CLK, then a SEQ is four steps. The block ends at the first module of another kind, and anything further left is not a step: a CLK drives the SEQ, and an ATN or QNT left of CV faders sets their range or scale. So CLK, ATN and four CV faders, then a SEQ, is a sequence of four steps.

CV faders: a step sequencer

Each CV fader is a step's voltage. A yellow line through the fader marks the step playing.

The top jack becomes REC, for recording. As the playhead lands on a step, that fader takes the voltage at REC. To record from a keyboard, patch its V/OCT into REC and its gate into the SEQ's CLK: each key pressed writes its note and moves on a step. While a cable is in REC, the title's first letter turns red and it reads REQ.

CRVs: an LFO or an envelope

Each CRV is a segment of one shape. The SEQ plays through each curve across its step, so OUT moves smoothly. The CRV guide builds an LFO and an envelope from them.

TRGs: a trigger sequencer

Each trigger of a TRG is a step, so one TRG of eight triggers is eight steps. OUT is labelled TRIG and fires a 1 ms trigger at 10 V as the playhead lands on a lit trigger; an unlit one is a rest. Triggers patched into REC are recorded, each on the nearest step.

The small square left of the mode button, marked P, turns on poly steps. Then each TRG is one step, and its lit triggers fire together, one channel per trigger, on a poly cable labelled POLY: up to sixteen trigger tracks stepped together.

QNTs: a chord sequencer

Each QNT is a step, and OUT, labelled POLY, gives that step's lit keys as a chord. The top jack is QNT IN: patch a voltage there and the QNT under the playhead quantizes it, so the scale changes with each step.

ATNs: a switch and a router

Each ATN is a step, and OUT gives the ATN playing: its signal, or its offset if nothing is patched into it. The top jack is ROUTE: a signal patched there goes into the ATN playing, scaled by its gain and offset, and comes out of that ATN's own OUT as well as the SEQ's. Patch an oscillator into ROUTE and cable each ATN's OUT to a different filter, and the SEQ hands the sound to each in turn. While a cable is in ROUTE the title reads ROQ, its first two letters red.

The small square left of the mode button, marked with a crossing, turns on crossfade: OUT then fades from one ATN to the next across the step.

Modes

Click the mode button for the next mode; the shortcuts below jump straight to PLAY or HALT. PREVIEW is there only when the SEQ steps through something you edit by dragging: CV faders, CRVs, QNTs or ATNs. Alone, or over TRGs, the modes are PLAY, HALT and ONCE.

In ONCE, OUT keeps giving the last step, and over CRVs the end of the last curve. On pendulum a pass is there and back, so ONCE ends on the way back: on step two, or over CRVs at the start of the first curve.

Direction

The mark left of the step number is the direction; click it for the next.

Whole and free rate

A whole rate is for music on a grid. A free rate is for a SEQ used as a signal, swept by an LFO or drifting from its clock.

The rate is how many steps the SEQ takes for each clock tick, from /255 to x255. A whole rate moves only in steps, x2, x3, /4, and a change lands on the next clock tick, so the sequence stays on the beat. A voltage at RATE snaps to the nearest step too.

Click the pie to make the rate free. A free rate takes any value, a change is heard at once, and a voltage at RATE sweeps it smoothly; the jack's label changes to FM.

Phase

PHASE moves the playhead by voltage. 0 to 10 V takes it once through a pass, starting from the step on the screen, and negative volts move it back. The 10 V is shared equally along a pass: going forward through five steps, each step is 2 V wide, so 0 to 2 V is the step on the screen and 2 to 4 V the next. Driven by a running clock, PHASE offsets the playhead from where the clock puts it. With PHASE patched, EOC becomes STEP and fires each time the step changes.

To drive the playhead from PHASE alone, give the SEQ no clock, by cable or bonded, or set the mode to HALT, which ignores the clock. A slow ramp into PHASE then scans the steps, and an LFO plays them back and forth at its own speed.

Reset

A trigger at RESET sends the SEQ back to step one. Driven by a clock in BPM, step one plays on a tick: a reset that comes with a tick, or up to 1 ms after it, plays step one on that tick, and a reset at any other time makes step one wait for the next tick. So a bar trigger sent with the clock resets cleanly, and a reset never falls off the beat. In HALT, or with no clock, step one plays at once. In ONCE a reset starts another pass. Driven by a CLK in Hz, RESET is a sync: it restarts the cycle at once.

A trigger at a CLK's RESET sends every SEQ that CLK drives back to step one at once, with a tick.

Slew and anti-aliasing

The small light right of OUT is slew. Shift-click it to turn slew on or off; drag it to set the glide time, up to half a second (1 ms to start), shown in the tooltip as you drag. A plain click does nothing. With slew on, OUT glides from step to step.

The two lights under OUT cut aliasing when the SEQ runs at audio rate: the left one band-limits the jumps (BLEP), the right one oversamples. A click turns both on or off. Turning slew on turns them off, and the other way round.

Shortcuts

On every module