Tag: sequencer

8 Step Sequencer

After proving myself that I could build a 4 step sequencer, I decided to move further and put it on a prototyping board, this time with 8 steps, and start messing with MIDI parameters like Velocity and Gate.

Because time is that precious thing, and this is being done after labour hours, I just soldered jumper wires to the components going directly into the Arduino headers, I really wanted to start programming this thing.

Such a crazy setup also means that hardware debugging will be a nightmare, I guess I have absolute faith in my soldering and wiring skills :D I totally disencourage anyone to approach a project this way, but anyway, do as I say not as I do..

The following video shows a quick test drive. The arduino sends MIDI messages to an Axoloti Core through MIDI, witch is the instrument being played.

4 step sequencer

Messing with the Axoloti board made me want to bang constantly notes while I am fiddling with sliders, values and parameters. First I started to bang MIDI notes using Live, but something didn’t feel right. I wanted to get rid of the computer, so there is no fun in having the computer generating notes. I ended up using an Arduino to bang some random MIDI notes, but this was also feeling weird.. I wanted more control over the notes, so let’s add a potentiometer to control the note’s pitch?
Ok, now I have two potentiometers, one for the time interval and another to specify the note pitch. This worked for the first 10 minutes, after this I was adding more pots, more buttons and even LEDs, and with a simple program, my first Step Sequencer was born.