Monome lmq

An Monome application to manipulate preconfigured or live recorded samples in Sonic Pi. Here is a short video showing lmq in action.

• Numbers in brackets, such as (1), refer to the white numbers in black circles in the illustrations below.
• The first illustration shows the lmq main page (a), the second shows one of the 8 parameter pages (b).
• Monome keys/leds are referred to as col (x) and row (y) numbers. Keep in mind that the program starts counting from 0 to 7. The following description uses the more intuitive numbering starting with 1. On the whole the 128 key Monome provides 16 columns and 8 rows.

lmq works with two kinds of samples:

1. samples you have stored on your harddisk. Functionality associated with those samples is being referred to as seq or sequencer.
2. samples you can record live with the live looper referred to as rec, recorded.

As to 1.: The seq samples are being sliced into a number of slices (16 by default) and will be available for sequencing and other manipulation via the seq led rows (1). You can play 4 samples at the same time (row top 4 rows in (a)). In accordance with that you can configure 4 folders in the variable :folder_paths in the file monome-lmq-settings.rb. The monome interface provides access to 16 samples per track/sequencer row, which means: you can store and access up to 16 samples (no. 0 to 15) in each folder and thus access 64 samples via the interface.

As to 2.: Besides the fact that you have to record these samples before you can play anything the main difference between the seq smaples and the rec samples is, that the latter will not be sliced but played as a whole. Again there are 4 tracks for recording and/or playback. You can hardcode the length of those track via the variable :looper_len; nevertheless in future (not implemented yet) you will also be able to load thoese sample into the sequencer to slice them (seq track source).

Interface elements and functions:

Main Page

Illustration (a)

(1) Seq Tracks

• If running press any key to set the starting point;
• press key, hold and press other key on the same track to set playback range.
• You can use a range to reverse the playback direction).
• Hold a key to repeat the respective slice. Slices will always played back with quantisation (see (b)).

(2) Bottom Area of Main Page

On the bottom area (row no. 5-8) of the main page you can control the playback volume of seq and rec tracks, access the parameter page for each track and some other functions:

(3) Col 1 of row 5-8 is used to start/stop the seq sample playback.

(4) + (8) Col 2-6 provide a 6 step volume control for seq sample 1-4; the same applies to col 10-15 as volume control for the rec tracks. The first of each fader group is a toggle and switches between 0 and 0.2 (as step no. 2 defined in the variable :amps), that why you can call it a 6-step fader.

(5) Col 7 provides a toggle seq track record for each track setting the respective seq track into key press recording mode: If you press one of the toggles the playback of the track will be stopped. Press a number of keys in row 1, 2, 3 or 4 and see the associated slices played back in this custom order. You can delete the recored sequence by using a double key press gesture: press the key just beside (6) the seq track record and the seq track record key itself (5) (see the label: seq track record delete) and the sequence recording for the associated track will be deleted.

(6) and (10): Go to parameter page for either the seq samples (1-4) or the recorded samples (5-8). Return with the bottom right key (col 16/row 8) on each parameter page.

(7) Not yet implemented. Toggle to map a rec sample as source of the respective seq track.

(8) Volume control 6-step fader for the recorded samples.

(9) Arm for recording. Will start a metronome beat and mark the beginning of the live looper recording. Implementation is functional but need some refinement. Detailed explanation will follow ...

Parameter Page(s)

Illustration (b)

(11) parameter page selection, same as main page column 8/row 5-8 (param page 1-4) and colum 16/row 5-8 (param page 5-8).

(12) parameters:

In parenthesis you'll find the names of the variables which provide the values assiged to the keys hard coded in monome-lmq-settings.rb:

• Row 1/columns 2-16: Low Pass Filter (:lpfs)
• Row 2/columns 2-16: High Pass Filter (:hpfs)
• Row 3/columns 2-16: Rate (:rates)
• Row 4/columns 2-16: RPitch (:rpitchs)
• Row 5/columns 2-16: Attack (attacks)
• Row 6/columns 2-16: Sustain (seq samples) / Release (rec samples) (:sus_rels)
• Row 7/columns 2-7: Beat Stretch (beat_stretchs)
• Row 8/columns 2-7: Quantisation (i. e. seep time for each seq sample slice) (:quants)

(13) Usually all parametes increase from columns 1 to 16; this is different for rate and rpitch because there are also negative values.

(14) seq sample selection: Depending on which seq sample param page is being selected you can choose one of 16 samples.

(15) Key column 16/row 8 is reserved as an ESC key and will on all param pages lead back to the main page.

The key above has not yet been assigend to any function but will probably toggle the live looper recording metronome.