ixiQuarks : PolyMachine

Poly Machine
The PolyMachine is a polyrhythmic pattern sequencer that implements four different TempoClocks controlling each channel. The instrument originates from a study of Indian talas but turned into a parody of the typical drum sequencer. The PolyMachine consists of 4 tracks where the number of steps in each track can be defined individually. One can view the instrument either with a fixed boxsize where the GUI window grows in size or a relative boxsize where the tracks adjust to the size of the window. Both modes have different qualities to them and it can be interesting to study the conceptual understanding of time and rhythm in the different representational modes. Each track has a time indicator that travels above the sequence line and triggers an event if the box is selected. The event can be triggering of a sound sample or a any function that SuperCollider can evaluate, such as synthesis or sending OSC messages to other environments or applications. The tracks have volume control and an envelope generator (for instance if the sound samples are too long). The boxes can trigger samples from Buffer Pools, sc code (that can be live-coded while the machine is running) and audio stream that is running on any audio channel. Amplitude envelopes can be set for each channel.