MidiBox Beatbox...combination w/ another project

[Guest eBetan]

I was trying to figure out how to use the midio128 or the MIDIbox64 SEQ as a drum sequencer (a much pondered question in this forum from what I can tell!) when I came across this other diy project:

http://www.bleepin.com/diy/

wow! a sequencer with no control surface....I think it would be an ideal marraige to pair the two projects into one box!...with a midibox64 and that card you almost have a beatbox! (minus sound sources...darn!) and the size would be only about that of an average book!!

But I am having trouble figuring out the schematics (http://www.bleepin.com/diy/Tweeq_sch.pdf)  It looks nothing like anything I've ever seen...perhaps a convention I am not accustomed to?  I emailed the developer, but have not heard back yet.  Any guidance would be great!...I think I have the gates figured out (I think he is using logic ICs, mosfets or something similar).  Its the wiring around the squares that appear to be ICs that confuse me, they are labeled (but not with the chip number from what I can tell) but seem to just be interconnected, that can't be right (I think).

Forgive me if my electronics knowledge seems a little basic (should have paid more attention in my circuits class!)

Anyhow!...opinions would be great,I am planning to build the beatbox, a controller for sonar and a sid (just for starters!)....been reading the forum and the site for a few months now, and am ready to dive in (have even looked at the sample code for writing apps for mios...beautifully commented!!!...hopefully I will soon be able to contribute to the mios applications too!)

Oh well, I have rambled long enough! (I am very eager, this is my first post)...I just want to say "Thank you, Thorsten".  I am sure the comparison has been made before, but you are the Linus Torevalds of midi!

Elliot

[stryd_one]

Hey mate...

The MB64SEQ does almost everything this box does so its hardly worth building the project you linked to if you already have an MB64SEQ...I thought the page worthy of bookmarking though :) Thanks..

I do like the idea of a beatbox from one of these things! If you could combine a MB64Seq with a MBSID, you could upload waveforms to the SID's wavetables and fill it with drums and basses :) ... By the time I'm ready for a sound source, the ISA bridge may be ready, and we could use a turtle beach pinnacle card and basically have a Kurzweil K2000 in a box..... But I digress ;D

I've mentiond a few times on the forum and have been working extensively with flownez (also on this forum) to find a way to use the MB64 platform to make a step sequencer more along the fruityloops style than the oldschool analog style. I must admit there's some merit in the logic of many people who suggest that I might as well just get an atari or something... But if youre like me, you just dont trust a computer in a live situation...

Anyway the flow diagrams and basic panel layouts and the inner workings are laid out and ready, along with some kinda interesting math :-/ (Pages and pages of it), which I thought I might mention because the guy on that page wrote:

"Currently, only 16 steps per bar and 6 (24PPQ) clock ticks per step is implemented. (I haven't worked out the logistics of crossfading between two different patterns of different lengths or different time signatures.) "

Well thanks to some very late nights, the help of a math guru at work, some technical expertise from flownez, and a HUUUGE helping had from TK of course :D I have worked that out, and I'm just chilling now until the MIOS sequencer is released, so that I can base my code along it's principles and capabilities... But I warn you now, one thing is clearly evident - This thing is going to need a few core modules at least, and heaps of ram, and won't be a small project or one that gets finished superfast.. I (un)fortunately have a job hehehe

Seeing as the topic has come up and I've got something more concrete to put forward this time, I might mention a few bits I wanted it to have and are currently included in the design... Quite a few of these don't exist elsewhere...

Full duplex - record and edit while playing back without interruption

Rrealtime Quantizing - so you can record say drum triggers and it will snap all the hits to a step on the pattern, on the fly, and play away looping that great break you just did, then hit mute buttons and you get the picture...

A "Really honest officer, I didn't steal the idea for this interface from fruityloops" interface with rows of buttons and a little screen for editing parameters of the step, and the ability not only to sequence notes into patterns, but to sequence those patterns into songs (actually I wanted to do three layers, so you can sequence steps into patterns into phrases into songs)

Polyrhythmic structures - mixing up time signatures and keeping them in sync

A side effect of the timing/length/resolution math required for this is that you''ll also be able to do triplet notes or weird things that I dont even know if they exist like fifthlet notes (this is the real reason I'm going to all this trouble)

Piano roll - It's more of a Grid edit but it's nicer than faders IMO (But hey I'll make it so you can use knobs/faders too)... We'll see if I can find a way to get a set of piano keys in there... I really can't see it being difficult, without veolicty sensitivy, theyre just a row of switches like any other...Just gotta find a set of plastic keys..

Despite all this stuff it's still very much a step sequencer... I plan on using a Roland MC50Mk2 and/or kawai Q-80EX for the more intricate stuff, however to be honest, because of the way this thing works (I hope;) ), it would be quite happy doing that kind of work itself...but I can't think of an easy way to display and edit it... Try and think of a way to emulate your mouse and PC screen with sonar or logic or something's piano roll.....On MIOS  :-/

Last thing for now, Envelope style MIDI CC's - You set the level at desired steps and the way to curve the envelope, and a resolution at which to send the controllers - a nice way to send filter sweeps or autowahs etc which uses hardly any controller info (which eats RAM for breakfast) (No officer I swear I didn't steal this from Sonar and neither did Logic hehehe)

Anyway I'm usually a "less talk, more action" kind of guy so I'll go back to being hushed and shy about my little addiction heheheh ;) I hope you like it so far, obviously you're thinking of something kind of similar, so feel free to throw in any thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them :)

Geez that's a long post! sorry! :-X!

[Guest eBetan]

I must say! I am very impressed by your project!...very ambitious, and it sounds like you have it very far along! I too was hoping to implement a fruity-loops-like step sequencer (ie, more buttons than pots) and that was how I wound up at that site  ;D I couldnt figure out how to have buttons instead of pots (cause that would require a din, not ains...and thats just the hardware issue, I dont even know how many more issues might make this difficult from the software perspective!  I just want simple, fruity (or rebirth, orion, etc.) style on or off steps, not velocity or pitch info....(but accent WOULD be cool...but I digress -- one thing at a time!)  But if you guys are working on getting this running on the Midibox platform then far better (at least its a platform well documented enough for me to understand!).  Oh!, and as for your dilema about implementing a piano roll in your seqeuncer, how about an interface like the 303?....you could either have the step buttons double as not buttons, or just have a completely seperate set of buttons for this feature.  Someone made a really cool 303 clone (not the one you see most often, another one) that has almost all the buttons implemented pretty faithfully, and it's sequencer portion is made with the MB platform!....MIOS actually! check it out!

http://www.acidcode.de/

[stryd_one]

Heya :) Thanks for your words of encouragement!

You sure that sequencer is based on MIOS? There isn't a MIOS sequencer yet, not one started by TK anyway... Although with MIOS being out there, there is absolutely nothing stopping someone from writing their own seq code for it, which is not based on the MB64Seq... It seems that the code for this project uses Thorsten's bootloader to enable software updates... Hard to say more than that, as they haven't made the source codes available....

As for the piano roll thing, the current design works something like what you've suggested, however it runs vertically (Sonar/Logic/Cubase style)... Basically at the moment there are 16x12 buttons, and when in the grid editor, those buttons will be 16 steps of 12 keys (one octave) with octave up/down buttons...FWIW I'd really like to make it 32 steps long but that may not be practical so there might be a thing where i split it into steps 1-16 and 17-32 or something like that). The reason for doing this vertically is to preserve the ability to alter pitch on different notes at once...

I guess the hard part about a piano roll interface is setting note's start time and length. The actual note that is played, is easy to set, as the available options are limited (127 note numbers)... However the placement of that note in time, is interesting. When we use a step seq, by slicing up a bar into 16 steps, we limit the available options for note start and end times, so it gets easy, but if you want to work outside of those steps, it gets interesting because the number of times the note could start and end are limited only by the machine's clock (at worst case its a 2MHz clock so thats 2 million places to start or end a note every second hmmm... at best, it's gonna be 24 places to start or end the note, in every quarter note which passes (MIDI clock resolution)... I thought about having an LCD screen with two mousewheel style rollers, one vertical and one horizontal, which could be used to set the current position, so we'll see how that goes... I realised after thinking up this idea that a PC mouse could also be very easily modified to do the same job... What's more the mouse could also be used as an X-Y controller ;) .... A very interesting part of this is going to be what's involved in getting the piano roll info on a LCD.. I must admit that the LCD side of things is something I know very little about :(

I'm strongly considering alowing control of the box by PC, and only supporting the piano roll under that interface. This is cool with me despite my hatred for PC's and their love for crashing at inconvenient moments, as if the PC crashed, due to the nature of the machine, it would just keep playing... You'd just have to reboot the PC and reattach to the seq which will still be thrashing along.

the software on the PC would be very basic, and could easily be run on the cruddliest old PC with a serial port and a copy of win95. we like that, cause we're broke ;) Of course if you didn't connect a PC then the machine would still work fine, just no piano roll. well, youd get that grid thing of course, just no graphic piano roll.

If you don't need pitch info then youre just repeating the same note, why not just loop it?

Anyway fortunately for us, the MIDI spec doesn't allow for notes without pitch or velocity, so if the info has to be sent, I figure I might as well make it so you can edit those things, but it will work in the same fashion as fruity, where if you just push the button and turn it on, it'll set itself to velocity 100, Gate time of one step, middle C. And yes there will be accent and slide. Accent will scale the other notes down to 90% of their original velocity, this is to allow for accent on notes that are already at the maximum velocity.

I realise that the slide (portamento) feature is more built into the synth itself than the seq, however i wanted a quick way to draw longer notes, so say if you have a step with a C3 note, followed by another step with a C3 note, and you put the porta/slide on the first step, then it will automatically blend the two into one C3 note, as long as 2 steps. If the notes are different pitches, then it will overlap them, so the first step will actually finish shortly after the second begins. This should get the portamento happening on your external synths...

Anyway, once again the existing MB64Seq already fills your requirements. The buttons on the Seq can be used to mute on/off the notes, and the knobs can be used to make an accent

I think this thread is about the most I've written about this thing in one go heh! I'm starting to scare myself off, seeing all the features listed out ;)

[mF_freak]

eBetan,

Wow! the ml 303 thing looks pretty nice and sounds really good (mp3 demos), and everything is very well documented. Thank you for sharing this DIY site with us. :)

//edit: btw do you know how to get to the PCBs or PCB layouts? Didnt find any on that site. Hes mentioning that the Diy project is over now btw... Thx

[Guest eBetan]

Actually, when I skimmed the docs i THOUGHT they were there, but now looking again, you are right.  he shows where all the parts are on his pcb, but doesnt give a schematic OR pcb layout.  I went through the forum a couple of minutes, and I found this in forum FAQs:

Q: Can i have the schematic of the V4?

A: Yes. Please ask via eMail: mail@acidcode.de

so I figure you just have to email him and specify you want the schematics for the sequencer AND the analogue board

[mF_freak]

well, i don't have the time to create a pcb layout...

Thanks anyway. I will look forward for his future diys with pcb layouts.  ;)

[chriss]

hi all,

very cool that this topic come up again, in the meantime i was just designing some kind of sequencer based on theMbseq64 for my tb303 clone, because after using programms like logik for sequencing, i realized that i need something else.

But my design is far away from yours stryd_one. so it is better not to talk about. and talk about yours since it looks very promising. can´t hardly wait that TK is getting out the Mbseq64 for MIOS and your design shows up. Unfortunatly i never owned a classical step sequencer (only an analog 16 step), so i am an absolut newbe on saving and editing and chaining patterns with buttons and encoders.  And i don´t  know anything about fruityloops so i have to see and learn. that´s good.

so i am looking forward to see all your design implemtations and your panellayout.

PS: You guys bring up the topic about the ML_303. A month ago I thought about getting a set cause i like the concept of the classical TB303 but i wanted to make some mods (i also like it when it also fits more in our time (display, etc.), and i like to design my own surface with my own buttons etc.)

So i asked the site owner about getting the schematics and the code but his reply: thats not possible. I can understand this its very ok. it is a lot work to design a pcb and get all the parts and design the code, but it i is not good for the project though.

I like this forum much more and i like TK for his long anwers and patience much more. And i like you guys for your great input.

chriss

[stryd_one]

hi chris :)

I guess I'm trying to make the ultimate step sequencer... So if your ideas are not secrets, I'd love to hear some! Perhaps we can incorporate your ideas into this project, so that we have one project with 'everything', rather than both of us spending a great deal of time doing the same thing twice, and ending up with two seq's that are missing features .... The more ideas, the better, I say :)

Cheers,

stryd one

[chriss]

hi Todd,

"i guess I'm trying to make the ultimate step sequencer" thats what i thought and felt myself a littlebit stupid to tell you my plans, because thats absolute not ultimate.

just having two rows of 16 encoders with ledrings. Two buttons on there site, changing (between note on/off and env depth for the first row, and cutoff and resonance for the second.

And on row with 16 buttons. As well a button beside where you can switch between gate , accent and slide to be muted... and of course all the features TK is going to implement.

All this is very simple and i guess i will rather stuck with your design. But as i said before this forum works like that and i shouldn´t be so shy.

chriss

[Guest matzzze]

Hi Guys,

my english is not so good, but i`ll try my best :)

The ML-303 sequencer is not based on MIOS, it`s a

bit different from the MIOS concept but it uses the same

bootloader, i got permission from Thorsten to use it  

(thanks!).

I don`t have any ML-303 PCB`s left and it makes no

sense to send the layouts. This is not because i

would`nt do it, this is just because the PCB`s were

made with industrial equipment and they are 2-Layer

with 0,2 mm thin lines, dozens of via`s. It is

impossible to make such a PCB with DIY-home equipment.

On the other hand after so many years of trying to

build my ML clone i experienced that it is even important

where some of the lines lay on the board! If you

build a 303 clone straight from the schematic you will

get clicks and pops in the signal, problem is often heard

in home-built 303 clones.

But for every interested DIYer i will release source-code

and schematics from my sequencer-board in the near

future :) But there were many thing`s who could make

better. It`s not that hard to build a really cool seq.

with modern PIC like the 18F452.

Hope you could understand what i want to say, if i

only had learned more english in school-time instead

of drawing weird schematic`s  ;D

Cheers,

Mathias

www.acidcode.de

[Guest cjlargear]

hi stryd_one have you considered adding an arpeggiator(just like in fruityloops)? it could be a nice addition  ;D and it would help a lot of people expand their creativity  ;)

As for the whole concept ... what can anyone say. Hoorey for your courage  ;D

The whole community will want to praise you. a real MB sequencer, man it is really something big. i know that TK set the standards but the whole idea is for the users to expand it. BRAVO  :D

Music is a powerfull weapon, an evil as well as a good.

We are the men that rule its laws  8)

[stryd_one]

An Arpeggiator! of course! Consider it included :D

Good idea man, thankyou very much for your input cjlargear! :)

[Guest cjlargear]

How about another feature.Different resolution for each pattern.You see that the very same pattern sounds very different by only changing its resolution say from 16ths to 4ths.This way we could create easily pad patterns and other long notes rhythms with easy and this could also expand our creativity

[stryd_one]

Hey CJ

Thanks for the idea man. This feature will already be available through the quantizer :) I hope you'll like it !

Cheers