seqdelay
With seqdelay, I thought it would be interesting to try syncing the beat to one of my hardware modules (I used the looping trigger capability of my Blue Latern Simple ADSR module). I adjusted the loop timing 'by hand' so that it more-or-less synchronized with the long (7 second) delay time I set up in Max/MSP. I had done something like this before in one of my vcvetudes (vcv-4) with good results. I was using a much smaller delay in that one, however.
I like the fact that the delay doesn't sync exactly; in both the vcv-4 and the seqdelay pieces there is a slight mistiming that gives the music some internal animation. The notes don't always hit exactly on the right time interval. Kind of like life.
Oh, I also added a few chordal 'clouds' of notes generated by RTcmix ([rtcmix~]) controlling an osciullator in my modular setup. Hey, you can't go wrong with clouds of notes!
I did one other thing with the seqdelay piece. I've been listening a lot to music on YouTube that has been 'stretched' using the paulXstretch.app, and I thought I might experiment with stretching seqdelay. It had a bit more 'movement' in it than my other recent long-delay pieces. My hope that this would translate into something relatively slow-moving but still be interesting.
I first tried a stretch factor of 21 -- waaaay too ambient! The resulting piece was almost 3 hours long. I think it would be a good basis for one of my generative ambient apps, but I would need to tweak the output for it to move a little more.
I finally settled on a stretch factor of 7.8 (I like sevens and eights). I almost used 3.4, but decided I wanted something more meditative, even though 3.4 was still pretty slow. The resulting 3.4-stretched piece was about 25 minutes long, compared to the hour of seqplay7.8x.
I'm listening to seqplay7.8x now as I write this. My pulse rate
is slowing. Good.
Brad Garton
July, 2025