Modulate note probability for motifs

[Jesse Johannesen]

Hi everyone,

Just got my NDLR and loving the creative possibilities! One thing I like to do in my music is set a percentage or random chance/probability of a note being triggered in a given sequence. The only way I've found to simulate this with NDLR is to modulate Motif on/off. This has some quirks though - it's not per-step, so you can get extended periods of silence / playing before the modulation triggers again and turns the sequence off or back on. I've tried using velocity, but I can't find a way to get random 0 or 127 values out of an LFO. Is there any way to acheive per-step probability?

Thanks!

Ooo, this sounds like fun. 
You could make a set of identical Rhythms (I think you could just make 1 and save it to multipe slots, although I can't remember if that works for saving to the first 20 or not, I know you cant save to the first 20 motif patterns) and then go through and edit individual steps out so that each has one or two missing on steps where you want less probability, and then modulate the Rhythm with a random LFO making sure to keep the mod amount such that you don't go outside your chosen set of Rhythms. 

I can see two ways you might want to go about organizing it: 
1. Choose to to use an odd number of Rhythms and keep the middle one selected as the one that has all notes present, therefore with no modulation present it plays the normal vanilla pattern and by adding modulation it begins to vary. 
2. You could set up Rhythm 1 to be the vanilla, and the rest of the variations above it. Then choose a mod source with a bipolar shape so that half of the time it will be on the vanilla Rhythm (since it cant go below the first Rhythm it will just stay there) and the other half it will be on a variation. 

With method 1 you could make multiple rhythm "sets" and use the panel controls to move the main selection to the middle of the next one if you want multiple movements, or tracks to work with. In fact you could use another LFO set to square wave shape with a long synced rate and also sent to the Rhythm to modulate between the two patterns that would be awesome. You would have to set the Mod Amount to be the value that separates the two mid points of your Rhythm "sets", so if they're on 1-7 and 8-14 then you would set Mod amount to 7 for the square wave, (I would guess you set the bipolar lfo to either 3-4 or 7. you'd need to experiment with that value to see how it behaves).

I hope this helps, I love the idea. I will have to give this a shot on my own and see how it works. 
Jesse