As the band looks towards going DAWless, I find myself having to look at Eurorack sequencers quite a bit more. There’s lots of DAW-none ways to do that. Ornament & Crime (particularly the Phazerville firmware) has some nice options for doing that. Also CV keyboards, like the Arturia Keystep have a sequencer.
But since I’m also writing a tracker for the Commander X16, I got to thinking, why not write a tiny tracker module onto WaveBoy! The main problem I see is that the screen is quite small for being able to read letters. This tied to the display library in use can also make updating the display potentially problematic. I can solve for this to a degree by enlarging the current row of the view.
The sequencer could be controlled via the following inputs:
- V/Oct = Base Pitch
- Trig/Gate = Advance Sequence
- CV = Select 1 of 16 sequences
- Step = Gate (or a VCA?)
- Audio = Pitch
V/Oct sets the base pitch so the sequence can be tuned/transposed. The trigger advances the sequence, just as it would using the sequencer in wave mode. The CV flips through 16 sequences. The step output could be a gate but I could also do all sorts of things, like volume slides, gate length, etc. That could make it function as a basic gate or more like a VCA.
The pattern view might look something like this:
00 C-4 80
01 ... ..
02 D#4 40
03 ... ..
04 F-4 30
05 G-4 80
06 ... ..
07 ... ..
08 END ..
Recording a sequence could be done via the knobs and optionally using CV and Trigger to fill in the note at the current played note (which might require quantization). Similar to the Sampler mode, each “song” would have its own named directory on the SD card with 16 text files that would comprise each pattern. Meaning that I can probably find a suitable file format that allows for making sequences externally by editing a text file where each line in the file corresponds to a row. That also allows for the potential for external tools. Of course the SD card is mounted at the back of the module, so moving these to/from can be a bit annoying. I did this by design. While it might not be a popular move, I really don’t like seeing card slots on my Eurorack modules. And keeping it in the back avoids it from getting popped out during a live performance and such. Perhaps I can solve that by adding a header for folks to panel mount the SD card slot somewhere, but that’s a thought for another day.
Anyways! I dunno if I’ll end up doing this but I think it could end up being worth it. This wouldn’t be the only tracker in Eurorack, and it certainly won’t be the most complex. But I grew up on trackers and they have been a part of my life ever since, so it perhaps makes some sense to pay homage to them as an additional feature.
