Features
An eight-channel generative groovebox on Zynthian, played entirely from a Native Instruments Maschine MK2 — pads, encoders, both displays, LEDs. Five euclidean drum channels and three Turing-machine voices, all eight always alive; nothing is created or torn down while playing.
The generator owns the pattern. You do not draw a beat. You set hits, rotation and randomness, and the driver writes real notes into Zynthian's own sequencer — so patterns persist in snapshots and the touchscreen pattern editor mirrors exactly what the pads show.
How to play it starts at Quick start; how it is built is Internals.
The eight channels
| Group | Name | Kind | Engine | MIDI ch | Colour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | KICK | drum | LinuxSampler, an SFZ drum machine | 1 | red |
| B | SNAR | drum | LinuxSampler | 2 | orange |
| C | CLAP | drum | LinuxSampler | 3 | amber |
| D | CHAT | drum | LinuxSampler | 4 | yellow-green |
| E | OHAT | drum | LinuxSampler | 5 | green |
| F | BASS | voice | JC303 | 6 | blue |
| G | LEAD | voice | Obxd | 7 | violet |
| H | PADS | voice | padthv1 | 8 | cyan |
Drums are warm colours and voices cool, so the seam between the halves is visible on the panel without reading anything. All eight are always alive — nothing is created or torn down while playing.
The factory snapshot ships one channel against that grain. E · OHAT keeps its Simmons kit and its sampler, but arrives switched to voice behaviour: the Turing register walks the kit's own samples rather than euclid placing them. It is there so the switch below is audible the moment you plug in. Its tab reads VOX, and GRID blinks while it is selected.
What it does
Each of these has a page with a walkthrough on the real instrument.
- Generating patterns
- Euclidean drums and Turing-machine voices. You set hits, rotation and randomness; the generator writes the notes and you steer it.
- Playing and recording
- The pads are the instrument. Hold REC and what you play is captured into the same pattern the generator writes — and the pattern becomes yours.
- Modulation
- Hold MOD and every encoder stops setting a value and starts setting how that value moves. Saved with the set, still running tomorrow.
- Sound and presets
- Kits, samples and engine presets, changed while the rig plays — and switching what a channel behaves as without swapping its engine.
- Deep parameter control
- Eight knobs reaching a synth's fortieth parameter, on pages built from whatever the plugin publishes.
- Mixing and effects
- One control across all eight channels, two post-fader inserts on every one, and the globals that belong to the machine.
- The surface
- Every button, both displays, what each light means, and the list to work down when a channel goes quiet.
- Saving your work
- What a snapshot carries, what it cannot, and the one control in the web interface that looks like a save button and is not.
What it is not
No song mode, no pattern chaining, no sampling, no audio recording. Eight channels, always alive. It is an instrument for playing a single evolving pattern, not a workstation for arranging one.