MI braids on scarp

What?!

One of the main reasons I built scarp was to have a simple platform to test ideas. I recently commented on my progress porting Mutable instruments braids (and tides, plaits and elements) to arduino. All the testing was done with scarp, since it’s easy to use. This is the first release of that effort.

A 9 minute overview of what it can sound like (all voices).

It includes :

1. display of voice names and parameter values
2. Encoder button sets interval mode (1-7, western tradition)
3. Encoder button and one of 1-8 buttons, set root note (starting at c)
4. Encoder push & turn, select synth voice
5. pot left, set timbre
6. pot right, set color
7. buttons play notes with led feedback. wow!

I’m adding a euclidean sequencer to allow automatic self-sequencing :)

Firmwares

You can download the firmware for MI braids on scarp:

MI braids on Scarp sha256sum 295dbe8eba44007b15cd04b09436575e61a66d3d03dd77cfd1da9a098511d025

You might check the github repo for more recent updates as this page may lag a bit.

Installing firmware

is as simple as holding the white ‘bootsel’ button on the pico, and plugging the usb into a computer. The pico will show up as a removable drive, RPI-RP2. Drag a uf2 file to the drive and it will reboot into that firmware as soon as the copy is finished. Easy.

Syncing

I haven’t implemented it yet, but when I’ve finished the sequencer, I will use the scarps clock in to add sync so you can riff melodies on the scarp with a pocket operator.