Global Sequencer Concepts

Rhythmic Computation Lab 2018 for Kyma 7

A sequencer is a finite state machine. Its output signal is the value of a single element in a pre-composed collection stored in memory. Its state can be updated to read from a different element of the collection, thus changing its output signal. A fundamental property of a sequencer is that the collection it is reading from has a fixed number of elements, a fixed size.

This set of elements is called a sequence, pattern, collection or series.

The elements in a sequence could be fixed values but may also be dynamically changing values. In fact, an element in a collection could be anything — a number, an object or a signal — as long as it is something that can be represented as a single element in the sequence. For example, a sequence of values might be logic values representing an onset or a rest.

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

Complexity rapidly grows when an element is specified to be the result of an interactive event, a probabilistic expression, a time varying function or maybe even the output of some other sequencer.

Another fundamental principle to understand is that the state machine begins a relationship with intervallic time, as soon as it is asked to update its state periodically. Updating its state is a process that is triggered by some type of logical input, which may cause it to take a step in the pattern it is reading from, towards the next (or another) element in the pattern. The process of iteration casts data elements into perceivable time events, a form of rhythm.