[PD] (newbie) troubles and questions: monorhythm, iemlib, pdstartup etc

[mark]

>
>3rd monorhythm, I assume this object (in mjlib i
>think) just sets up a series of clocks for controlling
>sequencers for polyrhythms. How do I connect these
>with sequencers (say the analogue sequencer in the
>doc.reference audio examples). I guess this is more of
>a question as to how loadbang works, how to build and
>connect sequencers to oscillators.

Hi, 

I guess I'm best placed to answer this since I wrote it :-) 

The basic idea is to provide "beats" freed from the normal
drum machine grid (where every bar for every instrument 
has the same number of beats). 

So you could have a monorhythm set up controlling say 
a bass drum with a pattern of "1 1 1 1"  and a time of "1000" 
(milliseconds) - this will give you 4 beats in a 1 second bar. 
You could then set up a second monrythm driving say a 
snare drum (these are just examples off the top of my head
- this might sound shit if you actually made it) - if you give 
this a time of "1000" and connect its sync input to the sync 
output of the first monrhythm and give it a pattern of "1 1 1"
you will get three beats per second played against the 4 of the 
bass drum. 

I use a simple arrangement of textfile to feed patterns to the 
monrythms - there was an envelope generator that did the same 
thing (with a textfile) a while ago. I usually drive a drum machine 
(Attack being my favourite) or a sample directly from makenotes 
connected to the outputs of the monorythm. To make it more interesting 
patterns can have 2 and 0 in them - 0 is a rest (but still counts towards
the number of beats in the given time frame) and 2 outputs a beat 
on the other output (either exclusively or non-exclusively depending 
on whether you have sent the "exclusive" message to the monorhythm. 
This lets you do accents (either by making a different note (use 
exclusive mode) or altering a control value (say a filter) where its 
best to use non-exclusive mode). 

There is documentation with it in the form of  a help patch 
that should be installed - read the readme with the library. There is also 
a polyexample patch which shows something similar to what I describe 
above. Where I have bangs to show the output you should put makenotes 
and connect it to your drum machine or sampler via midi. 

If you are being really flash you could connect these outputs to a 
textfile based sequencer (or something more complex) and have 
different sounds on each beat - this would work well with a tabla 
multisample where you have different sounds on each beat. 

The idea was to  a)  free my drum programing from the rigid patterns 
that dance music seems to have forced on most drum machines - and 
b) free me from the boring process of having to specify every 
bar - this way you can set up different length patterns on each drum 
sound and let them run against each other. If you want to hear this 
in action have a listen to: http://www.junklight.com/april02/taikonaut.mp3
the drums are ALL  generated by Attack driven by monrythms (with different 
patterns fed to the monorythms each bar by textfiles).

cheers

mark 

_____________________________________
junklight - dark experimental electronics
http://www.junklight.com