Had some difficulty to really understand Stack / Grid spirit in the module and found some nice information from Cyclonix in Modwigler forum :
taylor12k wrote:
i love the rainmaker. one of the most inspiring modules i’ve ever used… but i certainly don’t understand the whole delay time/tap/pile/etc thing… it’s not explained well in the manual and seems overly complicated… but it’s still a great module!!
It’s pretty simple.
Maybe the easiest way for some people to follow what is going on is to think of the 16 taps as steps in a step sequencer. If you feed in a single drum hit, for example, then the output of the taps will sound in sequence.
Suppose taps 4, 8, 12, and 16 have their levels set to max, with all others tap levels set to zero. Then the “sequence” looks like:
- - - X - - - X - - - X - - - X
If taps 2,4,5,6,12,14,16 were high, with the others set to zero, then the “sequence” would be
- X - X X X - - - - - X - X - X
So, by setting the tap levels you can get different rhythms. If you then add pitch shifts, panning and filtering to each active tap you can get interesting variations in your rhythm.
Now, the question is - what is the time between the tap outputs in this case? (note: the following assumes that the Groove Type is “Straight”).
Think of a piece of sheet music, where you are given a metronome setting. The metronome setting typically gives a note length (e.g. quarter note or half note) and a tempo (beats per minute). On the Rainmaker, the DELAY CLOCK Time setting gives you the tempo and the GRID setting gives you the note length. Viewed in this way,at a given tempo setting, the GRID setting tells us how the 16 taps are to be interpreted as note lengths - e.g. if GRID = 4 then the taps can be interpreted as quarter notes; if GRID = 2 taps are half notes; if GRID = 16 then the taps are 16th notes.
So, a DELAY CLOCK Time of 500msec and a GRID of 4 can be thought of (at least using our “step sequencer” analogy) to a metronome setting of q=120.
taylor12k wrote:
for example, has anyone figured out how to get a simple one tap delay with a 20 second delay time?
Use TAP# 16 (i.e. set the LEVEL for taps 1 through 15 to zero and the LEVEL for tap 16 to max).
Then, set GRID to 4/beat and the TIME to 5 seconds (using the rotary encoder).
taylor12k wrote:
what are the settings in all those taps and piles? and there seems to be a difference and/or relationship between “clock time” and “tempo” and even “mod time” sometimes seems to be controlling the echo time…
DELAY CLOCK Time and Tempo are the same thing on the Rainmaker.
Do you mean TIME MOD instead of mod time? If so, then yes, of course, the TIME MOD affects the delay time. That is what it does - modulates the delay time (making it longer and shorter following the LFO waveform).
taylor12k wrote:
also, grain time sometimes seems to override, or be more noticeable than delay time…
With more than one grain, the grains begin at different times. This can sometimes be audible, giving the impression that the delay time for a tap is changing. You can hear this when playing with the global pitch shift knob, as the pitch of the grains are only changed at the start of the grain (to avoid clicks). This will occur at different times for each grain, resulting in a zippering of the pitch shift. Most of the time this sounds cool.
As for PILES (now called STACKS) this is just a way to have multiple filtering and pitch shift effects applied to a single delay time. Suppose Piles is set to 4 of 4. This means that, instead of 16 separate taps, we effectively now have 4 “fat” taps, each consisting of 4 channels (piles of 4 taps). This is implemented by piling taps 1,2,3 and 4 on top of each other to make the first pile, piling taps 5,6,7 and 8 to make another pile, and so on. So, for the first pile (made up of mooshing together taps 1,2,3 and 4) we can have 4 different filtering, panning and pitch effects all happening at the same delay time. Applications of this include making chords, where each of the tap in a pile is set to a different pitch shift. This is especially fun with vocal inputs, particularly when you space them out by applying a different pan setting to each tap in the pile.
That description as a 16 step sequencer got me thinking how awesome a cyclonix trigger sequencer would be. The groove options on the rainmaker are by far the grooviest of all eurorack swing capabilities… The ability to adjust from %0-100 is simply amazing for finding the perfect rhythm. Id love to have a couple of channels of 16 step triggers to punch in my own patterns and dial in the grooves just like in the RM.
You can sort of do that with the Rainmaker. Just send in a trigger to the TRIG input, and have the trigger set to shaped pulse ping. Then take the audio out and use it as a trigger for your envelopes or whatever. If you use the PAN for each tap, you could get two 8 step trigger sequencers (one on the OUTL and one on the OUTR.
Just tried this triggering a cyclebox in perc mode. Works fine. You have to kick up the gain on the delay on the Rainmaker (with the METERS+GAIN edit window).