ARDUINO 8 STEP KEYBOARD SEQUENCER FOR SYNTHESIZERS

Hey I'm looking I'm no computer and today I'm building a sequencer and hopefully after this you can to some ways this sequence a thing it's basically something that fires out a sequence and in the case of a synth it fires our sequence of voltages up here we've got a simple 8 step sequencer you can see there's lights and below the lights there's knobs when that light is on this knob is going to control things let's go to this one [Music] Anastasia these ones don't do anything until that light is above it but then if you send a clock through it it's going to make a sequence this is one of the simplest sequences he can make it's called a baby 8 sequencer and it's made with a 401 7 counter chip oh and what is 401 7 does is you send a signal in like this and it turns one pin off and another pin on and it turns the other pin on and another pin on these pins or legs of the chip are connected straight to potentiometers which means you can turn the voltage they sends out up and down and then you can make it very easily see the only downside about this baby a step sequencer is you can't adjust it to go backwards or forwards and stuff because that's not how this chip works so what if you swap this chip with an Arduino and then you can make it do whatever the heck you want so I'm going to go over to the workbench put one together and show you how it's done right I started a little bit too early in the build process because there's the big bang okay fast-forward a few billion years and then we get to this point so we've got 20 by 40 centimeter panel here I kind of measured it all out and then I started drilling pilot holes always because when you do big things are this it's really hard to get them in the right place so if you've got small holes there first you definitely get into our place for the potentiometers and the jacks are finger size ten millimeters absolutely lovely yeah and then I spray it but I usually spray outside for their video wasn't picking up Danny's cancer right now that's cancer so just do outside then put on the oven put on the oven and make sure it dries and then draw on a silver sharpie if you want I missed it with some clear lacquer and then I put it back and I'm just cool lovely then I get the potentiometer the buttons and all that kind of ball in I tighten them up with a pair of pliers but sometimes I miss and I scratch the panel it's really sad pop blue going in on LEDs cheapest way I promise you oh look at that alright and I put the knobs on so the first bit soldering is putting down the ground bus and this is just a long bow and you connect deferred cleans of every single pots and the negatives of every LED just because you got connect all of the grounds together get some diodes and you know cut the legs furthest away from the black stripe and then solder on to the middle leg of the potentiometer then I got a load of 1k resistors and perm on the positive leg of the LED this stops them from burning out and also purnam on the jack outs lovely lovely then there needs to be a wire that goes between all of the diodes and the output Jack with the resistor on it so I get bare wire and a sole room but don't solve them together just solder each line look at that lovely there's a line of bare wire that goes to every single Center pin at the pot those faster diodes now it's time to connect all the rows together get some more diodes this time I've got it close to the black line that's because the electricity is gonna flow out on the jacks and the black line is the one where it's going to so yeah solder I'm down onto the jack outs these are the gate outs of each step and a 1k resistor on now I connect up the potential mates together because each row connects to the same pin on the Arduino so these will connect together lovely jubbly and then yeah look at that as a beauty shot right there meet and then I sold all the LEDs to the same thing so the pots the LEDs and the 10k on the actual positive line but then our solder is straight to the ground of the jack that's a pulldown resistor to make sure that the digital input pin on the Arduino goes to ground and then turns off instead of does random stuff and I this is me doing the same so the other switches because they're digital inputs as well so this is a 10k resistor and that's gonna go straight to ground because you you want it to go down as a pulldown resistor pulls down the voltage when there's no other signal coming in lovely so that goes to the ground bus as well now I'm snipping some more diodes and these diodes are gonna go from that same leg that a 10k resistor is on but this diode is used to make the core at the gates bus which is actually gonna go straight verne connects over to the gates outs which is the thing that you can plug things in when you want it's a signal when you've pushed a button like a keyboard and then I solder long wires onto all of the rows and found it easiest to solder it on to the resistor because that's bare metal easy-peasy these are going to be used to connect to the Arduino lovely jubbly and now it's time to connect to the 5 volts together soft connected toward the others poles of the switches and then the middle of these switches as well so these are going straight to 5 volts so you connect them all together and that is so when you push a button it sends a signal to the Arduino oh is a strip board we've got some IC socket an Arduino Nano a set of 1/8 lo5 voltage regulator and your chosen power situation first you you know cut the bit so each side of the Arduino doesn't touch each other then you drill a hole to make it fit a socket and put their stuff in Boyds regulator solder that down right now yeah lovely and then you get a wire and plug it from that leg of the voltage regulator over to the voltage in and then you do the same with the ground the center pin of the voltage regulator good time contesters Bradley it works it skips the drill this hole now because you don't know how many wires are gonna be around so you might make a mistake and decided to do it elsewhere and that's a 20 millimeter standoff pin this is used to put the PCB on it now I've connected that damn this is moving quick [Music] lovely Spaghetti Junction all nice and neat that is it tada after all of that is done look at it loads of wires in the back it's a bit Spaghetti Junction but cleaned up so this one does a lot more than the baby a sequencer because it's with an Arduino you could code it to do whatever you want but this one I've made it so go forwards backwards and it's got a keyboard on it so you could select steps when you want it and also when there's no clock going in you could kind of use it as a keyboard so let's plug it in [Music] [Music] there's more information on the part list and the code on the website links in the description if you haven't already please check out a patreon because it'll be amazing to get support and be able to make more things on this and more inventions like the most recent 100 oscillator drone there's going to be lots of things going on like live streams giveaways more projects and even some patreon only projects so be sure to check those out and don't forget to subscribe thanks very much [Music]

Channel: LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER

Views: 288,099

Rating: 4.9450064 out of 5

Keywords: modular synth, DIY, how to, arduino, arduino synth, Electronics, look mum no computer, sequencer, education, science

Id: 9oGlCfwCoCw

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 19 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/jmvaas01]

This guy is insane, and amazing, by the way. I'm guessing this isn't the first of his vids to make it to /r/synthesizers before, although I haven't seen others here.

There's a huge divide between those of us who just unbox and play, and those who tinker, build and look inside. His videos, in an entertaining way, go a long way toward demystifying the tinkerers for me.

[u/nm1000]

I'm primarily a computer programmer but I've tinkered with electronics for almost 40 years and I have this to say about that... That dude is awesome -- indeed inspiring. Thanks for that link!

There's tons of good soldering tutorials. Feel free to ask questions. Cheers!

[u/ofoot]

Or a beatstep pro and sequence 2 minimoogs

[u/marksmak]

http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/mmt8.php

You can find them on eBay for $100.

[u/nothingrandom]

Is that a safety pin in his ear?

[u/archofmusic_dot_com]

I find it funny this guy is called look mum no computer but then installs an arduino in a sequencer. Honestly, there’s so many amazing sequencers made for the iPad you could use to sequence your minimoog and especially easily if it has usb midi.

The moog model 15 app has an 8 step arpeggiator similar to the sequencer he built. Then there’s StepPolyArp which is a 32 step arpeggiator that you can really do some cool things with. There’s genome midi for simple piano roll style midi sequencing which is cool because it actually has 16 tracks for each midi channel and you can compose entire songs with it.

I just picked up senode which is a really cool semi-generative sequencer. What’s cool about senode is you can program in chords for each node and then the moog model 15 arpeggiator will arpeggiate each note of the chords in different patterns. And then there’s fugue machine and xynthesizr which have been my goto sequencers for a while.

There’s also quantum sequencer I’ve heard good things about but haven’t picked up yet. Each of these apps are like $10 so for less than the cost of an arduino and without having to learn how to program an arduino you could get multiple apps with more functionality that are a lot of fun to play with.u

[u/plytheman]

If you are planning to start this project (which looks like a lot of fun, even if there are better sequencers out there), don't fear the soldering. I'm a total engineering ignoramus and have only soldered about 5 projects in my life, but something like this looks pretty easy and you'll figure it out pretty quickly!