if so, then I suggest you check out Nodal
Pictured above is my first noodle with Nodal – I set up a really basic pattern in Nodal & told Olga in LIVE to play whatever MIDI came its way… Nodals approach to sequencing is more akin to messing around in tech drawing class – it looks like graph paper & behaves like a very simple logic/flow diagram… but point it at a MIDI sound generator (in my case thanks to Olga & tweaking the filter knob) & my eyes start to glaze over….
So next I booted up Kontakt 3 & loaded SonicCouteres free Mbira samplebank & set about making a more erratic pattern in Nodal, something that didnt repeat evenly in 4/4 (click image above for fullscreen) & then I hit play and about half an hour later I finally got around to stopping it….
After a very rudimentary noodle around I have to say Nodal is brilliant! So immediate & instinctive; I have tried a few other generative MIDI programs & found them to be unusable – either the GUI was buggy or the complexity of whats possible outweighed what was fucntionably do-able…. And yet we have all doodled on graph paper in 4/4 & imagined the pattern of sound generated – point Nodal at your favourite synth/sampler & you get to hear that doodle! Next experiment is to load up Kontakt with individual insect samples & see if it can generate a hilltop summer paddock ambience…..
check out Nodal here
& for some of the most amazing looking Mbiras, check out this flickr page by RP Collider
My impressions of Nodal are similar.
It’s a bit like the game of Go – it’s very simple to learn, but surprisingly deep.