Humusprivate beta

1. The patcher

Goal: wire a patch from nothing, and learn the words the rest of the course uses: node, cord, organism, family, rack, preset.

You leave with: a patch you wired yourself, saved as your own file.

What you are looking at

  • The canvas in the middle holds nodes. Each node is one organism.
  • The organism list down the side of the canvas holds every organism by category. Double-click to add, or drag onto the canvas.
  • Properties on the right shows the editors of whatever is selected, stacked as a rack.
  • The Timeline below holds tracks and clips, for lesson 6.
  • The transport along the top plays, stops, loops and captures.

The three cords

Cords run from an outlet at the bottom of a node to an inlet at the top of another. There are three kinds, and the ports only accept their own:

Cord Carries Drawn
Audio sound solid
MIDI notes and controllers dotted
Video pictures its own colour, lesson 7

Control values (a knob following an LFO) are not a cord. They are a modulation you set on the knob itself, in lesson 4.

Families and colours

Every organism has a category and belongs to one of five families, and the family is the colour you see on the canvas: Voice makes sound, Time changes it, Motion moves other things, Sense listens and looks, Utility stays out of the way. Read the colours and you can read a patch you have never seen.

Steps

  1. New patch. Every patch starts with a SoundOut, the master output.
  2. Add a source. In the organism list, Instruments, double-click Acid.
  3. Wire it. Drag from Acid's audio outlet to SoundOut's inlet. The cord is solid.
  4. Play it. Toggle the computer keyboard on the toolbar and press keys. With Acid's editor focused, the keys play it.
  5. Add an effect. Right-click the cord, choose insert, pick Fern. It splices in.
  6. The organism bar. Under every editor's title: Bypass, the dice, the history arrows, the preset strip and ? for help. Try Bypass on Fern.
  7. Presets. Click the preset name to pick one; Store as new keeps your own.
  8. Tidy. Edit > Auto-arrange. Save the patch.

Shot list

  1. The four areas, each highlighted in turn while named.
  2. Empty canvas with SoundOut alone. Acid dropped in.
  3. The drag from outlet to inlet, the solid cord landing.
  4. Keys pressed, sound, the rack showing Acid.
  5. Right-click on the cord, Fern spliced in, the echo heard.
  6. The bar: Bypass on, off. The ? opens Help.
  7. Preset menu, one picked, one saved with a name.
  8. Auto-arrange, save dialog. Voice: "A patch is a plain file that will open forever."

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