Any tips on making an interface where the user can select different drum sounds to play in a sequence, I thought about using radio or tick boxes to select when to play beats in a sequence. Any advice would be much appreciated since I am a bit of a novice with PD!

Cheers

hi jay,

you can do it lots of different ways, and there are examples out there on the net (maybe google for "pure data drum sequencer" or somthing like that)

most people seem to go with the tick boxes (toggle switches).

you could use the radio object too, but that means you won't be able to trigger say a hi-hat and a bass drum at the same time. i wouldn't recommend building sequencers with radios.

there are a few other ways though.

my favourite is using an array and the tabread object. arrays are great, because you can make random patterns very easily and quickly. you can just draw in random sqiggles until your pattern sounds basically right, and then correct the dodgy bits by ear.

and if you start to get a better feel for pd and want to use it to do some next level sequencing, you can do stuff like looping a sample, and using the bonk~ object to detect each beat in that sample, and then trigger other sounds from those beats.

good suggestions hardoff. i like the array and tabread idea. if you need a more friendly interface for programming and displaying the sequence, there are a couple tricks you can use. for setting the sequence, have a matrix of tick boxes with a sub patch (graph on parent option checked). connect each tick box to a message that writes data to the table. (this is why a graph-on-parent sub patch is nice--you don't have to worry about the wires getting in the way...). for displaying the sequence, you can have a looping tabread set up that interprets the sequence and changes the parameters of a matrix of small canvases that correspond to the tick boxes. there are ways to have it so you don't have to have a seperate programming/display interfaces, but these tend to be trickier because you have to make sure you don't run in to loops:
e.g.
[r tick1]
|
[x]
|
[send hihat1]

[r hihat1]
|
etc
|


this will result in a loop that may cause Pd to crash. i've learned my lesson about these crashes the hard way so i've tried to get in the habit of saving more often, especially when creating what could possibly result in an infinite loop.

another advantage of using arrays for sequencers is that you can keep lots of arrays around and save presets or whatever.

patch away!
-zac

try this :
[url=http://www.em411.com/show/patch/299/1/zuwift_.html ]http://www.em411.com/show/patch/299/1/zuwift_.html

the sequencer of your dream. Clear and powerfull, very nice work. You could see how he use the array for sequencing drum samples.

giair!!! thank you!!!

i have not even opened this patch yet, but i just listened to the demo song in that thread and it is AWESOME!!!!!

woah.

aaargghhh!!!!