Brain
Electronic musicians, particularly those who use mostly hardware rather than software, usually have a "brain" in their setup. The brain is responsible for controlling the rest of the equipment and typically has at least a (MIDI/CV) sequencer and often sampling, synthesis and effects built in.
This is my attempt to turn a Raspberry Pi into the brain of my music setup.
The sequencer is written in Rust and is controlled using OSC messages.
Because I don't have a MIDI-controllable sampler, the project also contains a simple sampler written using Supercollider.
I have a PreSonus ATOM pad controller, and a QuNexus keyboard controller, so I want to be able to talk to the sequencer using MIDI. To do that, I'm using osmid the MIDI<->OSC bridge used in Sonic Pi.
Status
I'm currently working towards something "minimally viable" for making music. For me that means:
- A simple step sequencer that can control the internal sampler
- A sampler that can load a bunch of pre-prepared samples from a folder and play them back
- A way to receive step input from the PreSonus ATOM
- A basic "UI" to give me some indication what is happening. This might be lighting up the keys on the ATOM or something else
- Some way of controlling external gear. Perhaps as simple as outputting MIDI clock to that I can sync the sequencer of my Korg Volca Keys.
I could obviously take this idea much further, but it's useful to have something to focus on for version 1. I'm particularly inspired by the Squarp Pyramid sequencer with its performance tools, MIDI effects and so on.
Why?
Mostly as an excuse to teach myself Rust, learn more about real-time programming and to do something creative with computers. I'm really inspired by other Raspberry Pi-based music hardware projects such as the monome norns or , OTTO. These projects involve some custom hardware though, and I'm quite interested to see how far I can push a "stock" Raspberry Pi talking to my existing MIDI devices.