Inspired by this Andrew Huang video:

Sparkly Stomps is a stomp-activated sequenced synthesizer for adding somewhat random aural glitter into your music. A quick look:

You’ll notice on page 0, you have two copies of what almost looks like a typical keyboard layout. Your lower left note is C, directly above is C#/Db. The second column is D on the bottom and D#/Eb (you can remember where the black keys fall because sharps are above the named notes).

Now, only the bottom keyboard does something, and that’s select your key. The top keyboard is merely an indicator of the last pressed key, which is good for quick reference to make sure you’re not generating happiness in the wrong key. So that’s easy. Just press the lower keyboard the key that you’re in.

Now take a look at the stompswitches. The left one creates a major chord arpeggio, the middle creates a major scale run upwards, and the right creates a minor chord arpeggio upwards, all based on the key you selected above. So if C is your selected key, your left switch creates a four-octave C major arpeggio upwards, your middle creates a three-octave C major scale run upwards, and your right creates a four-octave Cm7 arpeggio upwards.

There’s one more thing on page 0 also, and that’s a little yellow value. This is merely connected to the gain of an audio mixer that controls the volume of the sparkles.

And that’s it for control. A few other pieces for the edit-inclined:

Page 1 is the FM synth. Currently just two simple sine waves. The carrier’s frequency is obviously driven by the sequencers, and the modulator is your selected key.

Pages 2, 3, and 4 are the sequencers. I liked the sound of the major chord, major scale, and minor seven chords, so that’s what I did. Editing these will do exactly what you expect: edit the notes in each run. This leads to blasts of whatever colors you want!

Page 5 is a bunch of boring logic to make it work. Points of interest are:

– Upper left is an S&H module that does all the key select smart tracking.

– The stomp switches all go into the value module on the “L” button. If you want any of the stompswitches to activate the same function, here’s where it’s connected, like…

– There’s three random modules in the lower left you can draw random parameters from. These go into LFO speed, delay time, reverb time, and filter frequencies.

– Upper right is your LFO for controlling speed of sequences. Change that speed (and connection strength to pink random module) for greater varieties in speeds.

Page 6 has ins, outs, and effects. Ping pong delay and plate reverb. Nice.

Page 7 is boring stuff to make the top keyboard on Page 0.