Jamuary 2024, Day 31.
A faithful recreation of the Music Thing Modular Turing Machine, designed and set up to use as a standalone sequencer w/ CV and MIDI connectivity!
At the end of my Jamuary experience quite a few months ago, I decided to take all that I had learned about working with ZOIA to create a one-to-one digital replica of the Turing Machine module! The YouTube channel Sound + Voltage has a fantastic video detailing how it works, and I recommend you check it out! Working through each feature one by one, I finally got the machine up and running on the ZOIA. It was not until recently when I revisited the patch to give it an overhaul in terms of features, as well as making it clear and relatively simple to use.
THE INTERFACE
The first thing to note is the red 8-bit visualizer running along the top to watch your sequence roll on by.
Then you have three main controls front and center:
The blue box gives you control over the range of the output voltage.
The yellow box selects how long your sequence is (2,3,4,5,6,8,12,16 steps).
The green box controls how random or locked in your sequence is: .5 is completely random, 1 is locked into your set step length, and 0 is locked into twice the step length, with the other half of the bit sequence being inverted.
The two white boxes on the right hand side are manual bit addition/subtraction inserts. The top box overwrites a bit value of 1 to the sequence and the bottom box overwrites a value of 0.
The orange grouping of boxes in the bottom left hand corner dictate what source you get your sequence gate from via a radio button layout. On the left you select the internal clock (with a tempo selector above), in the center you select the CV port in, and on the right you select the MIDI clock. When an input is selected, the corresponding switch turns white.
***The internal clock is able to be started and stopped with the left foot switch!
In the bottom right corner, you have the option of quantizing the output voltage of the sequencer. The top pushbutton toggles the quantizer on and off, while the actual quantizer sits below for you to tweak the key and the scale.
OUTPUT
The only two outputs from the ZOIA are a CV note voltage out of the control port and MIDI notes and gates.
Even though there are quite a few moving parts in this patch, it only uses around 15% of the ZOIA’s CPU leaving ample room to create synths and process effects alongside it! Get creative!
I haven’t been able to thoroughly test everything in this latest revision, so if anything seems amiss please let me know and I will try to get it fixed! This patch was also crafted on the ZOIA pedal, not the Euroburo, so who knows what all is transferrable between units.
I hope you all have fun with this one, I learned a lot from making it and I can’t wait to use it more myself!
