Instruo Performance Quantizer

[bc3]

Currently using the Penrose and the Intellijel uScale for quantizer duties. I really like the simplicity of both with the built in piano style interface to select notes.

I was thinking it would be really nice if there was a remote way (via midi) to select the notes you want to quantize to. So if you were playing a midi keyboard controller you could send the notes you are playing in real time via a midi input jack on the quantizer. Would something like this even be possible or does it already exist?

UPDATE 1/12/17: This module is now a reality thanks to Jason Lim of Instruo!
Currently in the testing phase but will be available from Instruo in the near future.

UPDATE 5/17/17: There is also a quad version of the original design available.

Original version



Quad version:

[Robscorch]

You seek a MIDI to CV conversion module.

[a773]

If I understand it correctly that's not what the OP wants. He would like a quantizer that where you can set the scale (select which notes it quantizer to) by pressing a traditional keyboard in real time.

Don't know of such a quantizer but it sounds useful

[XponentOne]

Just play the white ones, and start some where new every so often

[e-grad]

If I understand it correctly that's not what the OP wants. He would like a quantizer that where you can set the scale (select which notes it quantizer to) by pressing a traditional keyboard in real time.

Analogue Systems has a quantizer that allows for programming custom scales. However, I don't know how this is be done. Pls refer to manual if interested:
http://www.analoguesystems.co.uk/pdf/RS130.pdf

I'm off for cooking.

[Zymos]

Cool idea, don't think there is anything in Eurorack that can do this.
I bet if you got a computer involved you could make it happen...

[bc3]

If I understand it correctly that's not what the OP wants. He would like a quantizer that where you can set the scale (select which notes it quantizer to) by pressing a traditional keyboard in real time.

Don't know of such a quantizer but it sounds useful

Yes, you are correct

Just thought something like this would be useful when playing live that way your quantizer would always be playing in scale with what you were playing on a midi controller or keyboard. IMO this would make the quantizer even more performance oriented.

[Ebotronix]

Toppobrillo Quantimator

[pieter]

You need a CV-able quantizer. Many quantizers have a transpose input that you could address via MIDI to CV. Depending on what the quantizer accepts at the transpose input it would more or less do what you want.

[shuchoco]

a midi controlled quantizer is something i've been really wanting too.

seems like someone could write an alternate mode for YARNS that would do this.

[bc3]

a midi controlled quantizer is something i've been really wanting too.

seems like someone could write an alternate mode for YARNS that would do this.

Cool, glad I'm not the only one who embraces this design concept!

[shuchoco]

You need a CV-able quantizer. Many quantizers have a transpose input that you could address via MIDI to CV. Depending on what the quantizer accepts at the transpose input it would more or less do what you want.

you could do it with Quantimator (and some others i'm sure) by CVing the transpose input and the chord/scale input at the same time, but it's such a pain in the ass compared to simply playing chords on a midi keyboard to define the pitch set. to actually play a song or play with other musicians you'd have to meticulously set up the sequence for each chord/scale change.

if you could play chords with a MIDI controller and have a sequence respond in real time you could actually play with other musicians with a modular!! what a crazy concept.

i'm a big quantizer junkie and have almost all of them. none of them has quenched my thirst for ultimate quantize power! i feel like this functionality would go a long way to making the modular more friendly to using the modular for song writing

[bc3]

You need a CV-able quantizer. Many quantizers have a transpose input that you could address via MIDI to CV. Depending on what the quantizer accepts at the transpose input it would more or less do what you want.

you could do it with Quantimator (and some others i'm sure) by CVing the transpose input and the chord/scale input at the same time, but it's such a pain in the ass compared to simply playing chords on a midi keyboard to define the pitch set. to actually play a song or play with other musicians you'd have to meticulously set up the sequence for each chord/scale change.

if you could play chords with a MIDI controller and have a sequence respond in real time you could actually play with other musicians with a modular!! what a crazy concept.

i'm a big quantizer junkie and have almost all of them. none of them has quenched my thirst for ultimate quantize power! i feel like this functionality would go a long way to making the modular more friendly to using the modular for song writing

Yes! This is the exact reason I was wondering if something like this existed because I too play with other musicians using my modular and am always trying to find ways to make it more performance friendly. Hopefully there are others out there looking for the same thing enough for a module maker to consider if something like this would be feasible.

[Footkerchief]

The lack of this type of feature is why I sold my Rene. A real MIDI quantizer would enable an amazing combination of performative and generative sequencing.

[shuchoco]

I've just emailed Matthias Puech to ask him to consider making a Parasites for YARNS with this functionality.

If we could crowd source some kind of payment to encourage him to do it I bet he'd make it. I would be more than happy to throw a couple hundred dollars into the pot the make this a reality.

Very much lusting for this thing to exist

[Timmy]

I've just emailed Matthias Puech to ask him to consider making a Parasites for YARNS with this functionality.

If we could crowd source some kind of payment to encourage him to do it I bet he'd make it. I would be more than happy to throw a couple hundred dollars into the pot the make this a reality.

Very much lusting for this thing to exist

Yarns does not have any CV inputs, so how can it act as a CV quantiser? As Olivier Gillet once remarked, no amount of firmware hacking can convert a hardware input into an output, nor vice versa.

So the idea is that if you want your MIDI-enabled quantiser to quantise to, say, a Blues, um, no, a pentatonic major scale, you would hold down the five keys in that scale? Would they latch somehow, and if so, how? If not, you'd need two hands to hold down the keys for scales with more than 5 notes, which could be inconvenient.

I think the idea of CV controlled scale selection for a quantiser is better suited to the modular paradigm, and is something that could be added to the quad quantiser app in O&C, but I wonder how it might best work? There are 4 user-defined and 40-odd predefined scales available in the quantiser app in O&C. Would a CV just linearly select from those, or would the ability to chose, say, 4 or 8 of them in an arbitrary order be better, and have the CV scan through just those scales? Or have a trigger input step through the selected scales one by one?

[shuchoco]

ahh damn. didn't realize that. oh well :(

[a773]

So the idea is that if you want your MIDI-enabled quantiser to quantise to, say, a Blues major scale, you would hold down the five keys in that scale? Would they latch somehow, and if so, how? If not, you'd need two hands to hold down the keys for scales with more than 5 notes, which could be inconvenient.

It's not inconvenient. First you could use a hold pedal to add more notes, second I think of it more as a selection of notes. Could be a cluster like c, d, e or a chord progression. For people that spend years learning an instrument, the lack of options to use that in a modular can be frustrating. Best of both worlds would be preferrable. I struggle every day to get near the imediate interaction I have with a piano with my modular. It's getting better but there's a long way, partly because tools like the quantizer the OP is looking for doesn't excist...

NB: there are 6 notes in a blues scale

[indigoid]

I think the idea of CV controlled scale selection for a quantiser is better suited to the modular paradigm, and is something that could be added to the quad quantiser app in O&C, but I wonder how it might best work? There are 4 user-defined and 40-odd predefined scales available in the quantiser app in O&C. Would a CV just linearly select from those, or would the ability to chose, say, 4 or 8 of them in an arbitrary order be better, and have the CV scan through just those scales? Or have a trigger input step through the selected scales one by one?

I'm glad someone else posted about this first ;-) as I'd been wondering the same thing. I don't do the performance thing, so not worried about that, but I do want a CV-controlled quantizer.

I recently built Ian Fritz' "Analog XOR mod" circuit and have been having a lot of fun with

* a Synthrotek sequencer (which has multiple separately-attenuated CV outs)
* a Barton dual quantizer
* pulse outputs from a dual VCO with matched tuning
* the aforementioned Ian Fritz module

What I'd really like is CV control of the quantizer scale selection. Twiddling the pre-quantize CV magnitude (whether via VCAs or knobs) on the sequencer is a lot of fun but changing scales would be better.

[basicbasic]

YES! A remote keyboard controlled Penrose would be unreal!

[Timmy]

So the idea is that if you want your MIDI-enabled quantiser to quantise to, say, a Blues major scale, you would hold down the five keys in that scale? Would they latch somehow, and if so, how? If not, you'd need two hands to hold down the keys for scales with more than 5 notes, which could be inconvenient.

It's not inconvenient. First you could use a hold pedal to add more notes, second I think of it more as a selection of notes.

That's what I mean by latching the selected notes for the scale. You could use a pedal, but that requires more gear, somewhere on the module to plug it in etc. A button on the module panel could be used to latch the scale notes, but that requires a third hand if more than 5 notes in the scale. Of maybe just have it automatically latch the notes in a scale if, say one or more notes are held continuously on the keyboard for more than 1 second, or something similar. The MIDI keyboard used for this would need to be dedicated to quantiser scale selection duties, of at least one particular MIDI channel from it would need to be, if it is has selectable MIDI output channels.

Could be a cluster like c, d, e or a chord progression. For people that spend years learning an instrument, the lack of options to use that in a modular can be frustrating. Best of both worlds would be preferrable. I struggle every day to get near the imediate interaction I have with a piano with my modular. It's getting better but there's a long way, partly because tools like the quantizer the OP is looking for doesn't exist...

Sure, that's why I'm asking how such a thing might be operationalised. To make such a thing, it's behaviour needs to be thought through and precisely specified before the firmware for such a module can be written. And then it may take several iterations to get the operational paradigm right - but best to work out how might operate as a thought experiment first.

NB: there are 6 notes in a blues scale

Um yes, sorry, I'm merely a meta-musician, I know little of such things.

[Timmy]

What I'd really like is CV control of the quantizer scale selection. Twiddling the pre-quantize CV magnitude (whether via VCAs or knobs) on the sequencer is a lot of fun but changing scales would be better.

Well, such a feature could be added to the O&C module quite easily, but how would the scales be selected or scanned by the CV? It would be easy to just scan through them in a fixed order using a CV, but would that be very usable? Or would being able to choose a subset of scales in a user-defined order be better? Probably yes. How many scales? Is 4 enough, or 8?

[kindredlost]

The Heretic Enters....

In 5U there is the synthesizers.com Q172 quantizer aid for the Q171 quantizer.

It has a MIDI in and MIDI out jacks to do exactly this function.

It will even record the pitch bend so you can actually create micro-tuned scales.
Of course it is not Eurorack so absolutely no one will use it.

[bc3]

So the idea is that if you want your MIDI-enabled quantiser to quantise to, say, a Blues major scale, you would hold down the five keys in that scale? Would they latch somehow, and if so, how? If not, you'd need two hands to hold down the keys for scales with more than 5 notes, which could be inconvenient.

It's not inconvenient. First you could use a hold pedal to add more notes, second I think of it more as a selection of notes. Could be a cluster like c, d, e or a chord progression. For people that spend years learning an instrument, the lack of options to use that in a modular can be frustrating. Best of both worlds would be preferrable. I struggle every day to get near the imediate interaction I have with a piano with my modular. It's getting better but there's a long way, partly because tools like the quantizer the OP is looking for doesn't excist...

NB: there are 6 notes in a blues scale

I'm sure there has to be a way for this to exist! Great to know there are others out there who have wondered about this as well. Anybody want to help design a quantizer with midi in?!

[bc3]

The Heretic Enters....

In 5U there is the synthesizers.com Q172 quantizer aid for the Q171 quantizer.

It has a MIDI in and MIDI out jacks to do exactly this function.

It will even record the pitch bend so you can actually create micro-tuned scales.
Of course it is not Eurorack so absolutely no one will use it.

Very interesting, thanks for the info!!!