Phaseque

Buy for $30

Phaseque is a sequencer initially developed with two ideas in mind - solve some problems related to classical sequencers and create something new. For example, it's a common situation when composer realizes that start of a sequence is not at 1st step of sequencer - in such case Phaseque allows to easily shift pattern to desired position. Apart from that it provide many onther interesting things which are unusual for common sequencers.

To let Phaseque play it should be fed with one of three variants of transport information - Classic Clock (triggers or pulse), Phase (sawtooth in range of 0V - 10V) or V/BPS. If CLTCH is active it starts to drive sequence with active transport info:

When clutch is enabled the GATE become active. All other outputs with sequence info works regardless of clutch state, including V which is analogue of pitch from all other sequencers:

As said before, Phaseque supports different types of transport information, but its main feature is support of inter-beat positions.

In this mode Phaseque tries to detect tempo of triggers/pulse sent to the CLOCK input, but only if Auto Sync is enabled. In case it's disabled, Phaseque will play segment of a pattern with pre-selected tempo and then it will wait for the next pulse. This tempo can be adjusted with knob and can be overridden by V/BPS input.

V/BPS input which was mentioned above also can be used to turn sequencer in motion. V/BPS is an absolute value, it means "volts per beat per second", e.g. 2 volts = 2 beats per second = 120 beats per minute. You can read a bit more about this idea in Clock module documentation.

Phase clock is a most demonstrative transport mode of Phaseque. Range of PHASE input is from 0V to 10V. For usual tasks a sawtooth waveform can be used, every cycle of it will make sequencer to move trough another segment of its pattern. These segments are rendered at top of main display:

When using phase input the absolute phase mode becomes useful for direct control over position in sequence. It can be turned on by ABS button. In this mode only one phase period is scaled over the all pattern and phase-wrap detection mechanics are disabled, so you can directly control where pattern playhead is located by changing value in PHASE input. In abosolute mode it's even possible to make Phaseque work as a sawtooth VCO processor or function generator.

Each of 32 patterns inside Phaseque has its own resolution (RESO), which is displayed at reso display and can be adjusted with encoder. Pattern resolution sets the amount of phase cycles required to play it from start to end. For example, it allows to create complex rhythmical patterns by using combinations of several patterns with different resolutions and allows to change the speed of sequencer without changing the speed of main clock.

The incoming transport and pattern playback are not hard-coupled in Phaseque, its possible to disable CLTCH and pause pattern playback. Also GATE is disabled when there is no clutch. The RESET button resets phase to starting position which can be adjusted with the MANUAL encoder.

Phaseque has memory of 32 patterns and many ways to switch and detect switches between these patterns. On the grid the non-empty patterns are having slight highlighting, current pattern highlighted stronger and the next planned pattern has bright stroke around its number (we will talk about planned patterns later).

On the left from pattern grid the abosolute navigation section is located, at the bottom are inputs for relative navigation and on the right are outputs with information about pattern playback progress.

The V/12P input works similar to common V/OCT inputs but difference is that instead of musical notes there are pattern numbers. Each 1/12 of Volt equals 1 pattern. An impulse sent to the GOTO input will make sequencer switch to the pattern number which corresponds to voltage on V/12P input.

Following these absolute navigation mechanics there are also the WENT and V/12P outputs which are signalling about pattern switching.

All the relative navigation inputs are switching only between the non-empty patterns, e.g. ignoring the patterns without any changes made to them. The only exception is SEQ input.

The PREV and NEXT inputs will navigate to the higher or lower number of pattern. If there is no non-empty pattern in the desired direction they will go around.

The ←, ↓, ↑, → are inputs for 2D navigation. Like the two inputs mentioned above they switch only to the nearest non-empty pattern in the corresponding direction. The area in which these inputs operate is divided into 2 squares and the right square is really an upper continuation of left square, so it's a 4x8 rectangle. The easiest way to get familiar with those controls is to fill all the patterns with some sequences (right click on Phaseque -> "Randomize All Patterns") and try sending the pulses to each of them (one by one).

The SEQ input is for going to the planned pattern. Each pattern in the grid can have its successor, e.g. the pattern which will follow it when sequencer receives pulse on the SEQ input. The planned pattern can be choosen by right-clicking on the grid.

RND - switch to random non-empty pattern.

WAIT - the pattern navigation block. Useful to stop the sequencer walking over the patterns to eliminate unwanted corruption of them when editing the current pattern.

Phaseque gives back an information about current pattern playback.

Phaseque offers a number of destructive and non-destructive pattern transformation actions.

The SHIFT and LEN controls allow to dynamically adjust shift and length of steps with ability to control both over CV. Shift is adjustable with knob in range of +/- 1/8 of length of a pattern and additionally in the same range with corresponding CV input. Length can be increased up to 2 times with the LEN knob and additionally up to 2 times with its CV input.

The QNT and LEN buttons are for quantization of step positions and lengths. Quantization is done with snapping to 1/16 of pattern length.

The REV and FLIP buttons will reverse pattern horizontally (in time) or flip it vertically (in pitch).

The SHIFT block is for personal fine-tuned shifting of a pattern. This parameter is stored with a pattern so each pattern can have its own fine shift.

The GATE button makes the gates work contra-versa from their actual states. Also there is a GATE input which allow to invert the button's state.

The X CRV and X PWR inputs are for global adjustments of curvature and power parameters used for expression curves.

One of the unique and interesting features of Phaseque is pattern mutation. It gradually changes all the step parameters in current pattern following some vector. The vectors can gradually change with each mutation so mutation direction is not constant. The original states of step parameters are kept unchanged and it's possible to decrease mutation factor and get original sequence back to it's initial state.

The MUTA knob smoothly adjusts mutation while - and + inputs allows for steppy adjustments controlled by external impulses. The - input has special feature for negative impulses - it resets current mutation to zero.

Both - and + inputs are polyphonic and when receiving a polyphonic signal they will mutate corresponding steps.

The main outputs of sequencer can be used in 3 different modes:

When used with 8-Voice Polyphonic mode each step of a pattern will take its own channel from 1 to 8. When used with 16-Voice Polyphonic mode the 1-8 channels are used for original step parameters (without mutation applied) and 9-16 channels will contain mutated values.

Aside from the usual GATE and V Phaseque has some extra parameters on its outputs such as:

The row of JMP inputs allow to immediately jump to corresponding step. The RND input will make sequencer jump to random step. Also each of the steps has its own GATE output. The combination of outputs and inputs mentioned here allows to create complex or chaotic sequention logic when using various logic modules such as Bernoulli Gate.

Changelog