Taking our MIDI gear offgrid: Stolperbeats and Digitone

video upload by Making Sound Machines

"Finished a chilled weekend with a nice Sunday evening jam! Stolperbeats is heard here MIDI sequencing Elektron's Digitone 4 voice FM synth, a secret Making Sound Machines Eurorack prototype called Percussive Maintenance as well as Fred's Lab's cheeky little paraphonic voice called Zekit. If you haven't already, go check out the DIY workshops at Superbooth 2022 - where you can actually build a Zekit yourself!

Stolperbeats, roughly translating to 'beats tripping over themselves', is a drum trigger sequencer designed to create shuffled beats influenced by artists like Flying Lotus, Hiatus Kaiyote and J Dilla. We've always been fascinated by taking our beats offgrid to give them more fluidity and life. This module allows you to easily dial in and seamlessly switch between all the shuffle, feeling and groove we would, in the past, painstakingly nudge together in a DAW.

Stolperbeats' timing is set to Clave, a special mode where the accents in a 3:3:2 rhythm are fixed "on time" and the rest of the notes shuffle around that. The idea came when we chopped up some Modeselektor beats and started to add swing to them.

The Elektron Digitone acts as a sound module here, receiving Stolperbeats' triggers as MIDI notes - channel, pitch, velocity and note length can be adjusted per track to map to any MIDI capable drum machine or synth. The MIDI is split using the incredibly handy Meeblip cubit to target an extra bass voice on Fred's Lab Zekit. Of course, you can still patch the triggers into Eurorack at the same time, so we whipped out our Percussive Maintenance drum voice to add a kick and some hihats.

While Digitone's internal sequencer is not running in this sketch, Stolperbeats still sends a MIDI clock signal so the tempo synchronizes across the two machines. Enrica uses the built-in keys to live-transpose one of the tracks and play a shuffled melody on top of the sketch. We're very excited about Elektron 's new Syntakt by the way, that looks like a perfect match for Stolperbeats."

Offgrid Shuffle in Eurorack: LoFi Hiphop with Stolperbeats

video upload by Making Sound Machines

"Here's a modular lofi hiphop patch that came out so leftfield it was too fun not to share! It's built around #Stolperbeats and Befaco's fantastic Percall Quad Drum VCA, with Stolperbeats sequencing the shuffled gates and a wooden baseboard amplified and routed through our #TausenddB and #Multiplikand patched as a texture control.

Stolperbeats, 'beats tripping over themselves' in German, is our upcoming drum trigger sequencer designed to create shuffled beats influenced by artists like Flying Lotus, Hiatus Kaiyote and J Dilla. We really love those beats and used to reconstruct them for our tracks in the DAW, so we ended up digging deep into the techniques how real-life drummers like Questlove from The Roots or Perrin Moss from Hiatus Kaiyote play these shuffles.

This patch is almost a little hack as it uses Stolperbeats' clock outputs as a musical signal. Subdiv outputs the swung clock or a related set of tuplet subdivisions, perfect for syncing up cartesian sequencers like Make Noise Rene that advance one step per clock tick. Sync plays a straight unswung metronome ranging from once every four bars to 24 ppq, great for keeping a Delay or LFO in time.

Here, Stolperbeats' clock signals are patched to trigger Percall's VCA envelopes, shaping the sounds picked up from the board with piezo contact mics, and creating groove from the offset flams of the shuffled and straight clocks. Enrica is performing the drum rolls by changing the subdivisions on the fly. It's all held together by the lovely blips from Winterbloom 's Juno-inspired DCO Castor & Pollux on kick and a Patching Panda Hatz patch on snare duty.

We'll be showcasing this setup tonight at Muelheim Modular's lovely synth shop in Köln Mülheim. It's part of Mülheimer Nacht 2022 so if you're in Cologne, swing by and say hi! You will be able to try out the patches and modules hands-on. If you want to build our synth #DIY kits, we're hosting a workshop at Superbooth in Berlin, 13.05.2022, 17:00. If you are unable to make it to Berlin, kits are available at Muelheim Modular and Exploding Shed (EU), Thonk (UK) and dsp.coffee (US), or visit our website and mail us directly."

New Module: Making Sound Machines - Stolperbeats. Shuffled Beats in Eurorack!

video upload by Making Sound Machines

"Happy Easter everyone!

What started out as a tiny little seedling of a project, our secret pattern generator, has grown into its own and hatched as a full-grown Eurorack module! Stolperbeats, roughly translating to "beats tripping over themselves", is a drum trigger sequencer designed to create shuffled beats influenced by artists like FlyingLotus, HiatusKaiyote and JDilla. We've always been fascinated by taking our beats offgrid to give them more fluidity and life. This module allows you to easily dial in and seamlessly switch between all the shuffle, feeling and groove we would, in the past, painstakingly nudge together in a DAW.

Stolperbeats is heard here triggering Eurorack drum modules, including the fantastic Prok Drum available as a DIY kit from Thonk doing the obiwankenobi dragon call, Tiptopaudio’s One playing the @beatsbykabuki STRIKE audio card through @rocket_not FenixIV phaser and an unreleased Making Sound Machines prototype called PercussiveMaintenance, played through @serge_by_random_source 's wavemultiplier and with added oomph from @tomwhitwell's MusicThing Minidrive. The performance showcases switching from a nonuplet groove to a quintuplet shuffle in the blink of an eye.

Stolperbeats features CV and MIDI control over trigger patterns for Kick, Snare, open and closed Hihat and 2x Percussion, as well as control over the depth of shuffle applied. It outputs trigger signals for use with Eurorack drum modules, and MIDI suitable for drum machines and synthesizers.

The module is not in stores quite yet but you will be able to play it at @superbooth_berlin 2022. And you might have noticed a sneaky little peak of it in a @divkidvideo already : D"