CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS User Manual
Circadian Rhythms for modular music composers
INDEX Introduction ...................................... p.02 Section 1 Quick Start Tutorials ............................ p.03 1 - Vertical View Basics ..................... p.03 2 - Other Views ................................. p.07 3 - Groups and Presets Plus Copy, Paste and Save ............................ p.09 4 - Looping Presets and Groups for More Complex Patterns ............... p.11 Advanced Tutorials .............................. p.13 1 - Zoom Programming ..................... p.
Circadian Rhythms Features Hardware: • 8 trigger/gate outputs • Highly Accurate Internal Clock and Reset output • External Clock and Reset input Rhythmic Functions: • Up to 512 step sequences - 8x8x8 storage in memory • 16th note main grid resolution • 24ppq resolution in Zoom view for deep-dive, detailed sequence editing • Trigger delay per step • Swing with 8th or 16th notes • Gate width outputs gates up to 64 steps long Introduction Thank you for purchasing the Circadian Rhythms.
Quickstart Tutorial 1: Vertical View Basics For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll use the Tiptop 808 BD, Hihats, and Snares, but you can use any module that takes a gate or a trigger for an input to make a sound (for example, this could be an envelope generator triggering a VCA or a lo pass gate). Now, connect trigger outputs 1, 2, and 3 to the BD, Hihats, and Snares trigger/gate inputs respectively. CR has five main views (from top to bottom: 1x64, etc…), all in the lower righthand corner.
v v v v Channel column and output Channel 1, steps and output 04
Steps is where you can program your triggers/gates that will generate a rhythm. In Vertical view, the Steps will appear vertically. Steps are a collection of eight steps. It’s always a collection of eight steps, not six or three, just eight. Ok, so we’re viewing Channel 1’s first set of Steps. Let’s fill in some beats. Press the first and the fifth button on the Steps column. They will illuminate in green. You should now hear a BD kick on the one and the five making the familiar four-on-the-floor kick.
v v Snare out example QST 1: Review • CR has multiple views. The Vertical view is the primary view for editing and utility functions. • The CR’s outputs correspond to Channels. • Steps are a collection of eight steps. Steps output to Channels. • Channels have their associated Mute button on the same row in the column immediately to the right of the Channel. When unmuted, Mute shows you when a Channel is triggering. Press the associated Mute to mute a Channel.
Quickstart Tutorial 2: Other Views Don’t reset the classic house/techno rhythm pattern we programmed in the previous tutorial. Let’s explore the other four views besides Vertical. As stated earlier, Vertical is the primary view for programming rhythms. However, the CR’s views can be used in performance to program and/or view your Steps on the fly. For example, let’s select 8x8, the button right above Vertical.
You can edit your step patterns here in the 8x8 view also. Some users may prefer to start programming rhythms here in this view. The other three non-Vertical views besides the 8x8 view are similar except that they show patterns larger than eight steps in length. Patterns larger than eight steps in length are created by looping presets which will explore in Quickstart Tutorial 4. Just to fill in our knowledge, let’s look at how the 2x32 View appears.
Quickstart Tutorial 3: Groups and Presets Plus Copy, Paste, Clear, and Save So far, we’ve made a pretty simple rhythmic pattern, seen it in different views in the CR, and had the opportunity to edit in those views. Now, we’re going dive into groups and presets which will pave the way for more complex pattern programming. Let’s select the Vertical view we still have the basic house/techno beat running, let’s clear it and start something different.
You should have this pattern in Preset 1 which is the first button in Vertical under the Preset column. Now, press the button for Preset 2 below Preset 1. You should hear no sound being output. This preset is empty because you haven’t filled in this preset. Press the button for Preset 1 and you should hear your original pattern. We’re going copy the pattern for Preset 1 and paste it into Preset 2. Copy and Paste work similarly to Clear: First you press the action button and then where you want it to happen.
Looping Presets and Groups for More Complex Patterns Let’s explore Groups. Groups are structurally similar to Presets except that Groups contain 8 Presets. Right now, we should be in Group 1. If you Press Group 2 (one button down from Group 1 in the Group column), Group 2 will illuminate and you will hear no sound. Group 2 is empty. You can copy and paste among Groups in the same manner and you copied and pasted Presets.
An Aside: The Ladder of Being The Ladder of Being is an old concept used to describe a hierarchical set of containers that fit inside one another. The CR’s groupings are structured like the Ladder of Being. For more info: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being Going down the ladder: A Group has eight Presets. A Preset has eight sets of Steps and Channels. A set eight Channels has eight Steps each. Up the ladder. Channels and Steps are intimately tied together. Each Channel has eight Steps.
Quickstart Tutorial 4: Looping Presets and Groups for More Complex Patterns “Yes,” you are saying, “groups and presets are interesting and all, but our patterns are still only 8 steps in length. How can I make patterns that are 16, 32, 64, or even 256 steps in length?” Enter looping. Looping as a function in the CR allows you to loop through a set of selected presets or groups.
Simple House/Techno pattern variation for Group 1, Preset 2 Switch back to Vertical View for the Loop programming. To Loop these two presets and create a longer pattern, we need to press the Set Loop button. Looking at the Presets column, this shows us which presets are currently part of our Preset loop. By default, all of the Presets will be activated. For our loop, we only want Presets 1 and 2. Press the Preset buttons for Presets 3 through 8. This will deactivate all the presets in the loop.
Preset Looping active: Group 1, Preset 2 for Channel 3 (Snare) shown. Here’s what is really cool: Switch to the 4x16 View. You have a 16 Step Loop pattern of 2 Presets and you can now view and edit the Steps in this View (or any of the other nXn Views). If you want to add additional Presets to your loop, press the Preset Loop On/Off button. For example, if you want to add Preset 3, press the Preset Loop On/Off button and press Preset 3 and it will turn green.
From our Presets example, copy Group 1 to Group 2. For Presets 1 and 2 in Group 2, add an additional Snare hit and add some variations to your HiHat pattern. To Loop Groups 1 and 2 and Presets 1 and 2 from each Group, we need to press the Set Loop button and the Group Loop On/Off. Looking at the Groups column, this shows us which Groups are currently part of our Group loop. By default, all of the Groups will be activated. Your two Group loop should now be playing, cycling through all the Groups.
Advanced Tutorial 1: Zoom Programming Zoom is another view, but one with a very specific and micro-focused purpose: Zoom allows you to program your currently 8-step Step sequence at micro resolution. If we enter Zoom view, we can see our pattern, but instead of having only 8 steps, we have 48; the extra steps are between the standard 8 steps and we refer to them as Sub-Steps.
PRIMARY HITHATS TRIGGERS SUB STEP Zoom view: HiHats example with Sub Steps. A little music math behind the Zoom resolution might be useful here: the 6 SubSteps increase the resolution from the standard 16th notes to a 96th note. In terms of Parts Per Quarter Note (PPQN), 16th notes are 4 PPQN (1⁄4 the duration of a quarter note) while Zoom is 24 PPQN (4 PPQN * 6) which is a popular resolution for a number of reasons.
Zoom view: HiHats example with Sub Steps. Note, you can only edit Zoom steps in Zoom view. You’ll need to switch to Zoom mode from Vertical or one of the NxN views if you want to make changes to your current pattern that contains Zoomed sub-steps. For clarity, the above diagrams leave out two very important columns in Zoom view that allow changing the Channel and Preset without leaving the view: The seventh column changes the Preset in the current Group. Note: to change Group, return to Vertical View.
Advanced Tutorial 2: Fills and Programming Triggers Fills A Fill in the CR is a user-triggered drum fill that is designed to be used in performance to add accents or for whenever else you’d want to add a drum fill. The Fill that is generated in the CR is simply a set of consecutive triggers of varying note length (1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 and 1/64 either straight, as triplets, or dotted notes).
Please note your fills are NOT recorded in your Step sequences. Fills are designed for live performance. Let’s have some fun and have a fill with 1/32 triplets. Press the Fill button again to select options for your fill. The Preset column has divisions from top to bottom of triplet notes of 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 duration. Select the 4th button down. Now, press Fill twice to return to an active Fill. Press down the Trig4 button to fire your fill with 1/32 triplets.
Advanced Tutorial 3: Programming Gates The CR doesn’t generate only triggers. It can also generate gates in Patterns. As a review, triggers and gates are both “on-off” voltage signals used to activate another module (for example, to start an envelope generator, advance a clock, or fire a Tiptop BD808). The main difference between the two is the length of each and how they are used.
d d Gate Example in Vertical View Gates can run or be created in any view, not only Vertical as in our example. Gates can be looped and manipulated (for example, copied and pasted) just like triggers.
Advanced Tutorial 4: Syncing the Circadian Rhythm to Your DAW (or Any Clock) Because a true standard for synchronization has never been established, multiple methods for analog and digital clock synchronization have been developed for different electronic music devices and their manufacturers. We are hopeful this section can resolve some of the confusion that has emerged over the years due to the absence of standardization.
Before starting the application section, a few technical notes: • The rising edge of the pulse triggers the clock. Many audio interfaces have AC coupling which may invert the rising edge of the pulse. The clock input of the CR is designed with this in mind, so AC-coupled audio interfaces should work fine with the CR. Align the beginning of the pulse to the sample or bar/beat to advance the CR’s clock. • In order to trigger reliably, the level of the pulse signal from your DAW may need to exceed a few volts.
Applications Expert Sleepers Silent Way Expert Sleepers have a set of VST/AU plugins called ‘Silent Way’ which provide a range of utility functions from CV pitch control to Envelope and LFO generation to Synchronization. In this section, a standard audio interface will be used for signals and not the hardware made by Expert Sleepers for Eurorack. After you have Silent Way installed, load an instance of the SW Sync in a channel in your DAW.
To set up DAW sync using SW Sync, simply set the PPQN value to 24 as shown below. (24 pulses per quarter note x 4 for a four beat measure = 96th notes). Silent Way Sync Set for DAW Sync One last step: set the right sync on the CR. In Vertical mode, hold down the Global button until the normal Vertical mode disappears. This is Global mode. In the upper righthand corner, you should select the sync mode that you set up in SW Sync. If you went with 16th note sync, select 16TH.
Audio Loop Sync You don’t need a special plugin to sync the CR to your DAW. In fact, the CR will just as easily sync to an audio loop of a sync clock. Tiptop has provided some source clock audio files at various BPMs on the Tiptop Audio website. To use the audio sync file, simply follow the directions above for using SW Sync, but substitute the audio sync file. Loop the file in your DAW for the duration of your project and you’ve got one channel of clock throughout your session.
The above image shows an audio pulse in the Ableton Clip window sent by Silent Way through the audio output and recorded back into a track in Ableton. Notice the silence at the start of the region, this is the delay Ableton has not automatically compensated internally. Measuring the exact number of samples of silence is the best method for compensation. Unfortunately, Ableton lacks the ability to use samples as a unit, so this clip was sent to an external editor (Adobe Audition) to measure.
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CR Tips: Performance and Programming Ideas • CR isn’t just for programming drums and beats. For example, you can use it to drive the clock for melodic sequencers, creating melodies that have more interesting rhythms. • The reset input can be used to create fascinating complexity out of a few simple ingredients. Triggering the CR’s reset input from other modules can create non-regular patterns that generate complex rhythms (and poly- or cross-rhythms).
Circadian Rhythm Functions in Detail This section walks through each of the CR’s functions and describes them in detail. The functional details include some additional functional and technical details that are not covered in the quickstart tutorials above. We suggest using this as a reference after walking through the quickstart tutorials. View - a view is the UI display mode for the step data.
Views Vertical view Vertical view displays access to most of the functions of the CR. It is arranged in vertical columns instead of in horizontal rows like the other views. The columns are from left to right: Group: Selects the Group for display and editing. The current Group is shown with a green LED. Preset: Selects a Preset to edit. The selected Preset is green. Other LEDs may light when editing loops etc. Step: Entry of triggers or gates in the selected preset on the currently selected Channel.
In Beat Continue mode, groups and presets are switched immediately and the step is not reset. In Beat Sync mode, Groups or Presets are only switched at the end of each preset. Fill: Pressing the Fill button activates the Fill for the trigger buttons on and off. While Fill is active, press the Fill button a second time switches to Fill UI to select the fill rate. The Preset column selects even notes (8th, 16th,32nd, etc), the Step column selects triplet, and the Channel column selects dotted values.
Trigger 3/6: See trigger 1/4/7 above. Start/Stop: Starts and stops playback. When you press Stop, all current data is written to the internal memory (this can take up to 2 seconds to complete). The button will turn red when the save is complete. Once saved, your data will be available after powered down and powering up the CR. NOTE: For all clock modes and both internal and external clock sources, the only way to save data to the is to press STOP.
Zoom Zoom view offers editing of an additional 6 sub steps per 16th note and a single Channel in a Preset at a time. These additional 6 substeps are 24 PPQ (4 PPQ 16th note * 6 substeps) resolution and allow for the entry of intervals other than 16ths like triplets and dotted notes.
Clock in The CR accepts external analog pulses to sync to other sources. The following clock formats can be used: 16th: A pulse every 16th note (4 PPQ), typically used by many analog sequencers. This is quite common to find as a default for Eurorack modules and it is also the default for the CR. DIN: The 24 PPQ clock pulse plus Run signal used by the Roland TR series. The Run signal tells devices when to start and stop playback, so no resets are sent or received while DIN is running.
SyncBus The clock signal is the internal clock rate and effectively replaces the internal clock of the slave device. This is the most precise method to sync multiple Tiptop Syncbus devices like the CR or Trigger Riot. When multiple CR are connected, not only is the clock shared, but the slave modules will follow the ‘Boss’ module’s Group and Preset precisely during playback.
Swing The CR can add swing on both 8th and 16th notes. To enable swing, enter vertical view and press the swing button. The first press will turn the button green indicating 8th note swing, pressing again turns the button red for 16th note swing. Pressing the button again disables swing and the led is off. Swing amount is set by the swing knob.
LOOPING The CR can build loops at both Preset and Group levels. Each group can have its own loop consisting of any of the 8 presets. A loop of any of the 8 groups can be made as well. Preset Loops To create a loop of presets inside a group of any of the presets: 1. Enter Vertical View. Press the Vertical button on the bottom of the far right column. 2. Press the Set Loop button at the top of control 2 column. The Set Loop button will turn Green. 3.
Programming triggers and gates As described in Advanced Tutorial 3, Triggers and Gates only differ in their duration. Triggers are short pulses. Gates are longer, sustained pulses. Triggers are great for triggering short sounds like drum sounds; however, Gates are needed for playing the sustained notes of a synth sound, for example using the Z4000 envelope generator with the Sustain knob set high. To enter a Trigger on a step, press the desired step in the given view to place a trigger there.
Trigger buttons In Vertical view, each trigger channel has a dedicated button for triggering single pulses, fills or manually recording steps. With fill and recording off, pressing one of the trigger buttons outputs a single short trigger of that channel. This can be useful for adding single accents during a performance or for testing purposes. These triggers are not recorded into your Preset Fills The CR can insert fills to a running program at various rates.
Startup functions Updating the CR Firmware From time-to-time, Tiptop releases firmware updates to some of its modules including the CR. These firmware updates include changes to the hardware that fix bugs as well as add new features or improve current features. Firmware updates are applied to the CR via a USB flash drive (memory stick) connected to the USB port on the module back. The CR features a USB type A port that hosts USB 1.0 and 2.0 devices.
Specifications Width - 36HP Depth - 29.4mm inclusive of USB and cables +12v - 200mA -12v - 0mA +5v - 0mA Trigger Out - +5 volts Clock Out - +12 volts with no load, approx +5V with load. Reset Out - +12 volts with no load, approx +5V with load. Clock In max - +12 volts Clock In min - +4V Reset In max - +12 volts Reset In Min - +4V Internal clock jitter - < 50 microseconds Latency External Clock - any Trigger Out - < 50 microseconds User Manual by William Selman, Chris Clepper, Piero Fragola, Gur Milstein.
