Rev 5: New GUI, added the option to adjust the volume of individual drums sounds/voices, a 808-kit and delay….
Rev 4: Created pretty graphics for the GUI… added 16th swing (see instructions for more info) & samples from a volca beats unit…
Rev 3: You can choose between 4 drum machines (TR-707, LinnDrum1 & 2 and Tanzmaus) Please see instructions below for more info…
Big thank-you to Alex Ball for letting me use some of his samples (please check out his music & his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrUAuvM2Dhf6ibh50EvILlw , https://open.spotify.com/album/3CD4wUQoWyyp97wGvr46GA? )
Rev 2.: Redid the GUI to make the patch more user friendly… :) You can choose now between internal clock or external clock….
So this a (fully functional) 16 Step Sequencer controlling a drum machine (Kick, Snares, Clap, Hihats, Toms and Rimshot). Patch comes with reverb and a compressor, sends and receives midi clock…
Instructions:
(First of all, the patch is rather easy to use so don’t be deterred by my lengthy instructions. I just want to make things as clear as possible.)
When you open the patch you’ll see a matrix, that represents which of the 16 steps are activated and which are not.
Every line represents a quarter note. If you activate a step a circle by hitting one of the first four white keys on your Organelle (C4,D4,E4 or F4) a circle will appear on the line you have highlighted.
By turning the second knob you can select between the different drum sounds (see top right corner on screen for info). You can only edit the sound you have selected. The matrix will always show which of the 16 steps are activated for the sound you have currently selected.
Pressing the first 4 white keys of the first octave on the Organelle (c4,d5,e4,f4) lets you turn on the individual steps. (For example if you push D4, this will activate the 2 second 16th note.) Push the note again and it will deactivate the step.
Knob 3 let’s you switch between steps 1-4 (Line 1 of the matrix), steps 5-8 (line 2), steps 9-12 (line3) or steps 13-16 (line4). Whichever line you have currently selected will be highlighted. Depending on what you have selected the keys will edit step 1-4, 5-8, 9-12 or 13-16.
Knob 1 lets you switch between internal clock mode and external clock mode and lets you change BPM. Up to twelve o’clock you can change internal clock speed. After 12 o’clock you will enter external clock mode…(which deactivates aux-button start/stop functions as well)
You can choose between the four drum machines, by pressing the following keys: C5 (the second C on your Organelle) = TR707, D5=TR 808, E5= Tanzmaus, F5=Volca Beats, G5=LinnDrumLM1, A5=LinnDrum2
Press C#4, D#4, E#4 … A#4 to adjust the volume of the individual drum voices…
Press and hold key F#5 (second on c# on your organelle) and turn Knob 4 to dial in 16th swing. Press and hold key G#5 to add reverb. Press and hold A#5 for doted eight delay.
‘Aux button’ starts and stops the sequencer (and sends a midi start and stop signal)
Please be aware that the TR 707 and LinnDrum LM1 samples are used by permission of Alex Ball and may be used freely as long you don’t redistribute them…
Picture credit: Forat Electronics (CC BY-SA 3.0) and Speculos (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Speculos)
I love it! fantastic stuff. however, something seems wrong with the reverb. the sound doesn’t seem to be changing when I turn the knob. it seems to permanently have reverb.
Hi Andrew, thanks for your feedback! I fear I couldn’t reproduce your problem, as the reverb does seem to be working on my Organelle. Granted the patch doesn’t let you dial in vast amounts of reverb (I may have to increase the reverb feed in the next revision), but it should be noticeable. So this is guesswork here:
1. I designed the patch in a way, so that the reverb does not affect hihats and bass drums, as I find that makes the drums sound muddy in a mix and bass drum definition is lost. (Though I could easily change that for you)
2. The Linn drum samples do sound a bit “roomy”. Yet you did say you couldn’t hear a change in sound at all when you turned the knob (right?), so I guess this isn’t the problem.
If anybody else is reading this and experiencing the same issue please leave a comment. Thanks!
thanks for the reply! I was actually only playing around with the bass drum! Now, playing around with the snare drum I can hear the reverb effect changing when I turn the knob. thanks for posting these amazing patches!
Happy to hear it works and thanks for the kind words!
ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! Great patch and its nice to have something with a real step sequencer on here. Thanks so much.
Hi there!
Beatifully simple patch, only a suggestion:
the settings do not maintain after saving them with the organelle “save” command. Can you give me a direction to look to implement that?
Thanks a lot!
Hey man! That’s a really great patch, i’m using it a lot in my music, thank you very much!
The only issue i’ve encountered – the tempo seems to be a bit off all the time. When i try to record the pattern into Logic Pro X it always speeds up off click little by little. So basically it starts good but then gaining up speed a bit. Any idea what can cause this problem?
Thanks again!
Great patch! Very useful sequencer. One issue I encountered is that steps of some instruments are inaudible once there’s couple of instruments playing. I thought that maybe it was a polyphony limitation but adding steps of a different instruments in exactly the same spots worked fine. Thanks!
This is likely the most useful patch out of all of them, including C&G patches. Simple and intuitive – hard to beat a good ol’ 16-step sequencer concept!
I click the leftmost button and instead of green I just get flashing blue and white light and no sound?
Really loving this patch, probably my most used one so far!
Not really a problem but is there a way to add/change time signatures on this in the puredata file? I’m not sure how to program any of that but this is my favorite patch for drums, especially if it could save sequences somehow, and I’d like to have something like this to use for all my drums (I have an sp-303 but it’s hard to do sequencing without sounding too robotic or falling out of time) but worst case I’m guessing I could just do a bit of math and match the timing somehow or just learn how to change it in the data file and make a few copies for each time signature I wanna use (not sure if that’d mess it up though)
Thanks!
This is great! A really helpful alternative to the built-in polybeats drum machines included with the Organelle (which I love, but sometimes you want to repeat a single sound in a non-regular pattern).
I agree with other commenters that the only improvement would be to make it possible to save patterns for future use. I’d love to incorporate it into live performance, but it would be preferable not to build every new beat on the spot.
Anyway, thank you so much for making it!
This is a smashing patch thank you! I’ve modified mine to have an integer tempo value to make it a bit easier for recording without having to set up a midi clock