At the top of the main Gyre window are four Note Twisters. Each of these drives one note buss on the Buchla 225e MIDI interface. Each twister can use one of four different styles of note generation. Currently implemented are Shape Player, Scanning Sequencer, Random, Sample & Hold. They all take their timing info from a pulser row. The Twisters can also be independently clocked, and the clock can be put through a random function with an adjustable trigger density.

Shape player takes "shapes" which are held in tables, and plays them in a variety of ways.

ScanSeq is sort of like a step sequencer, with a few addressing modes. There is a block editor for the note sequence which is pretty flexible, and much faster than using the on-screen sliders for most editing.

Random implements several flavors of Random note generation.

Sample & Hold is pretty much like a sample hold run through a quantizer, in analog synth terms.

AdHoc has been the test bed for new Twisters. Currently it holds an arpeggiator, and a note delay. These can either listen to incoming MIDI sources, or can listen to other Gyre players.

As of this version of Gyre, the GestureSystem has been spun off into its own window. It allows for the recording of arbitrary gestures from a MIDI source or an on-screen slider. There are eight gesture players, which can be synced to the Pulser cycle time. The time base for individual Gestures can be set to conform to some relationship to the Pulser cycle time (e.g. play gesture one in 1x the Pulser cycle time, gesture two takes 3x the Pulser cycle time.) Gestures can be looped (sort of like an LFO with an arbitrary wave shape) or play single shot (sort of a like a envelope generator).

The gesture system can be played from the block control surface. I can launch gestures, record gestures, control speed, looping, etc. from the control surface. This is great fun.

One of my pet peeves with sequencers is how hard it is to change key and pitch classes on the fly. I've attempted to address this in Gyre by having a flexible note quantitization and selection scheme. The scale grid on the left side of the window can hold 48 scales/modes of my choosing, and the Circle of Fifths control sets the root pitch. This ScaleSelect window can be completely driven from the block controller. On the block, the Circle of Fifths looks more like the Diamond of Fifths, but works quite well.

So now that I have a flexible way to set pitch class, how am I going to remember all those modes? Easy, I'm going to cheat. Here is the mode visualizer, which shows the current mode and key, in note names, guitar tab as well as a keyboard.

I'm now using a Roland Handsonic as part of my setup. The Handsonic provide three MIDI channels worth of percussion, as well as a couple channels of melodic instruments. I now have a DrumGrid sequencer that is well-interfaced with both the Handsonic and the block.