Humusprivate beta

4. Control everything

Goal: any knob in the patch can be moved by something else. Learn the control organisms, the dice, and the Metapad, which moves every knob at once.

You leave with: a patch that changes on its own, and a surface you can sweep with one finger.

The control organisms

They live under Primitives and Control, in the Motion family:

  • LFO - a wave as a control signal, free or synced to the beat.
  • Math - one line of formula, once per sample, as oscillator, processor or modulator.
  • Follower - the loudness of a signal as a control value and a gate.
  • RNG - random numbers from the machine's own entropy.
  • Slider, Button, Var - a value with a handle, a push, a name.
  • Cluster and Decomposer - chords fired as voicings; audio turned into notes.

A control value is not a cord. Right-click the knob you want to move and pick the modulator under Control with; the knob takes an accent ring to show it is no longer only yours, and it animates as the source moves.

The dice

The dice on the organism bar roll the whole organism, and the history arrows beside them step back through the rolls. Random on a knob's right-click menu rolls only that knob, and Exclude from Random keeps a knob out of the dice. The whole-organism roll never touches volume, bypass, key or routing.

The Metapad

The Metapad is a two-dimensional surface, opened from its button on the window rail. New Snapshot captures every morph-eligible knob in the patch; place a few snapshots as points, switch to Interpolate, and dragging the cursor blends between them by proximity. One gesture sweeps dozens of parameters along whatever contour you drew.

The idea comes from the Metasurface that Ross Bencina designed for his own patcher, and Humus's ancestor took its patches from. The Metapad keeps the gesture and adds the things around it: the cursor is a parameter you can automate or map, and a performance capture records the morph path itself, not its effect on every knob it brushed.

Steps

  1. LFO on the filter. Open lesson 3's patch. Add an LFO, right-click Acid's Cutoff, pick the LFO under Control with. Sync the LFO to one bar.
  2. Follower on the reverb. Follower listening to the kick, modulating Bloom's mix, so the reverb ducks on every hit.
  3. Math. A formula that mixes the LFO with the beat, driving Grit's pulse width.
  4. Roll it. The dice on Grit's bar, then Random on one knob only.
  5. Metapad. Open it from the rail and take a snapshot. Change six knobs. Take another. Place them in opposite corners, Interpolate, and drag.
  6. Keep the sweep. Press Keep the Last 8 Bars on the transport while it plays. The morph path is on the timeline.

Shot list

  1. The right-click menu on Cutoff, the LFO chosen, the ring appearing, the knob turning by itself.
  2. Follower wired to the kick, Bloom's mix dipping on each hit.
  3. Math's one line typed, the pulse width moving.
  4. The dice, twice, the history arrow once.
  5. Two snapshots placed, Interpolate, a slow diagonal drag. Voice: "One finger, thirty knobs."
  6. Keep the Last 8 Bars pressed, the morph path drawn on the timeline.

Go deeper

  • The Metapad: restore masks, live control, tips.
  • Automation: the same knobs, drawn against time instead of moved by a source.