The Boolean Sequencer Goes Analog

[Inventor]

I recently realized a new twist on the Boolean Sequencer that I have been writing about on this forum for years now. In it's current form, the BS has a binary counter that drives a cloud of digital logic. The output(s) of this logic are combined to create the traditional CV and Gate signals of a conventional step sequencer.

One of the characteristics of the BS is that it has a 2^n step sequence (or shorter if reset is used), which can be as short as two steps or as long as, well, the numbers get huge. Another characteristic is that the BS tends to naturally produce musical phrases, or short sub-sequences that repeat and even change slightly during their repetition. The sub-sequences can also be micro-patterns of a larger structure that is itself pleasant to the ear. It's all due to the nature of digital logic itself, which is mathematical and therefore lends itself to music well.

So what's new? Well, until the other day I had always thought of this counter as counting at the tempo rate of the music piece. If that was 8 BPS, then the binary counter was clocked at 8 Hz. The actual audio content was always provided by something else that accepted the CV and Gate signals as input and translated those into audio content. This is very much the same as a conventional step sequencer. What is new is the realization that we can clock the counter FASTER than the tempo and use the lower order bits as the musical content itself, or as the stimulus of the musical content.

In this new approach there is no CV signal and no Gate signal. We still have the binary counter but it is now clocked faster than the tempo. Also we still have the cloud of logic, but it's analog in nature (such as fuzzy logic, neural net, or linear CMOS, etc.). In fact, with this approach there need not be any specific tempo to the music - it can create drones with rhythms of many tempos all related by the binary count.

Getting to be a bit hard to follow? We need an example. I will describe a simple example circuit in the following post.

Les

[Hollywood]

I've been waiting for this post for ages during my long lurking... please do tell me more!

[Inventor]

Hi Hollywood, I'll try to get to it now that you've brought it up. Truth be told, em is kind of dead or dying right now and while I plan to get back into it, at the moment I have wandered off to other thing.

Les

[Hollywood]

That's an awful shame, there's so many things here that I'd never have dreamed of! And thank you, it's appreciated!

[elmegil]

I'm tempted to quote Mark Twain

This place is WAY less active than Muff's right now but that basically means that the signal to noise ratio is much better, in my opinion.

[Hollywood]

There's an awful amount of lurking that goes on, but it seems there's a lot of seriously well-informed people here, so maybe it's a spectator forum? :p Still, this is where I discovered Lunettas and also people building synths from FPGAs. So much forward/backward thinking!

[telstarmagikistferrari]

I'm around, I'm reading... not much to add yet, but instinctively coming back, looking toward e-m to see what's going on.
mark.

[Inventor]

Hi Mark, I can't do much hardware now. Software I'm focusing on Second Life and a bit on Real Life, but not music. It's no fun without the interaction.

Les