ENIGMANOTEloops a phrase and mutates itlight / dark

ENIGMA

ENIGMA is a Turing Machine, the looping random sequencer: a register of bits shifts once a step, and the bit that falls off the end comes back in at the start, sometimes flipped. Left alone it repeats a phrase; with a little chance it drifts into a new one, a note at a time.

loops a phrase and mutates it

Half

NOTE

Reach it

the slot picker

ALGORITHM

LEN

Playing it

Press PLAY. Each step of the part's sequencer (DIV on its SEQ page sets the step) shifts the register once and plays what it now holds. LEN is the loop's length in steps: the pattern's LEN (1-64), the same knob as on the SEQ page. CHNC is how often the returning bit flips: at 0 % the loop repeats exactly, at the top of its range it is new every time, and in between it mutates slowly. When you find a phrase you like, turn CHNC to 0 to lock it.

The low half of the register picks the pitch, a degree of the shared scale spread over RANGE octaves, so ENIGMA stays in key. The high half is the gate: DENS sets how many steps sound, and because the gate bits loop with the pitch bits, the rests repeat with the phrase.

A key moves the phrase along the scale to start from that note; the next step plays from there. Stopped, hold a key to hear the phrase: it plays as it would with the transport running, until you let go.

ENIGMA is not on the default wheel: pick it on the PAIR page (hold HOME, tap GLO, KNOB 2) or give it a black key with the slot picker (The wheel).

MAIN

Where it comes from

The Turing Machine is Tom Whitwell's module for Music Thing Modular. ENIGMA follows the way Hemisphere Suite's TM applet and ENIGMA app play it (Jason Justian, MIT). firmware/src/enigma.c is written fresh for SQRL-1's note engines (databurn, MIT).