faeng is a sequencer. inspired by kria. powered by timber. connect a grid and take wing.
My brother pointed out to me the other day that my live music was lacking in drums and bass. Since drums and bass combine to form a genre I quite like, I was chagrined; indeed, my modular rack, while capable of many things, struggles to produce a rhythm section along with a lead. Faeng represents an attempt to remedy that for myself; I hope you might enjoy it too. (“Why do you do synths the hard way?” asks my brother) Faeng gives timber wings to soar alongside its inspiration, kria.
Many thanks to @markeats for timber, @tehn and everyone who has contributed to kria, @Galapagoose and @tyleretters for sequins and lattice, and to all of you for being part of such an inspiring community.
Now is the time for me (and you!) to use faeng, to find bugs and figure out what it wants to be.
norns. grid.
Plug in a grid.
To load a folder of samples
(into the active track’s bank)
press K3 on the landing page;
otherwise, scroll to page 1 with E1 and press K3 on Load to load individually.
K1+E1 scrolls the active sample; there are 64 per track,
although only the first 49 are playable (sorry)
To change the active track,
press one of the first four lighted buttons on the bottom row of the grid.
Four tracks.
To change the displayed page,
press one of the next five buttons
(note to kria afficionados, no “alt” pages—yet).
The pages are
Triggers,
Sample Fine / Note,
Sample Coarse / Octave,
Velocity
and Ratchet.
The slashed pages have varying behavior
depending on whether the corresponding track is set to multisample or repitch.
Multisample is like a drummer: one arm or leg can make multiple sounds,
but only one at a time, so triggers in the same row will “cut” each other.
Repitch is like a bassist: one core sound (selected with K1+E1),
but can play a mean melody.
On the Triggers page, all four tracks are visible,
but on the others, only the active track is displayed.
Try it: press some grid keys and hear your samples played back.
Velocity is maybe what you expect,
but Ratchet has some fun in store:
pressing above the current maximum ratchet value will turn on new “bits”
which can be turned on and off individually;
turn off the last bit to reset the behavior of the step.
There are three mods:
Loop,
Division
and Probability,
which correspond to the next group of three on the nav bar.
Each changes the interaction and will flash while active,
and can be deactivated by pressing the same button again.
Loop allows you to move and resize a track’s loop
(like kria, each of faeng’s pages has an individual loop length).
To move, press a key to move the start of the row to that x-coordinate.
To resize, press the left and right ends of the new loop at the same time—
but release the right side first;
releasing the left side first will set the loop length to one.
Division shows the clock divider for the current track’s selected page.
The default division is 16th notes,
and in general setting the division row to coordinate x will result in a division of x/16.
(Like kria, each page for each track has its own division.)
Probability shows the likelihood that a given step will update the behavior of the track.
Each page for each track has its own set of probabilities.
Faeng is powered by sequins.
Hold a step for a second and two things will happen:
the grid UI will change,
and the active track button will begin to dance.
You’ve entered SubSequins mode.
On the triggers page, the SubSequins row is row 6,
while on other pages, the SubSequins UI takes up the full page.
Resize the SubSequins by using the same gesture as the Loop mod,
then enter data.
Each time the step you originally selected is reached,
its SubSequins will advance, multiplying the variations one track can create.
To leave SubSequins mode, press the flashing Track button.
You’ll see that the step you created a SubSequins for
will dance to show you the values you entered—
the dancing may not line up perfectly with what you hear.
Finally, the last key on the nav bar is the Patterns page.
Press a pattern to switch to it;
press and hold to copy the current pattern to it.
Switching patterns and back is a good way to bring your loops back into phase.
Faeng also has kria’s Metasequencer,
which can create a metapattern of up to 64 patterns,
each with its own length,
set by row 7.
Activate the Metasequencer while on the Patterns page
by holding the Patterns page key
and pressing in row 7.
In the Metasequencer,
row 2 is a clock divider for row 7.
Rows 3 through 6 are the 64 ‘steps’ of the Metasequencer;
press one to select it or press two as in the Loop mod
to resize the sequence.
With a step selected, press a pattern to store it as that step’s data.
Don’t be alarmed:
the other page views follow the currently active pattern as set by the Metasequencer,
so the view may change over time.
To exit the Metasequencer,
repeat the gesture that you used to enter it.
;install https://github.com/ryleelyman/faeng