Orbital Laser

In essence, it is a simple beat slicer and effects sequencer combo ... somewhere between recycle and turnado, if that helps give you the idea.

At the moment, this is a first release ... somewhere between a release candidate, and an early beta ... but I've found it useful even in this early stage, and quite demented fun. It's a useful tool for live sets, and I've found it to be a quick loop generator.

Unfortunately, the interface in this first draft is hardcoded for a 7" tablet. It's going to be an awkward fit on a phone, except perhaps for the larger phablets. As more stuff gets added in, it will start to fill out the larger screens.

Quick instructions

- load a sample, press analyse, and start playback to the given tempo with the blue button in the upper left corner.

- analysis is only by fixed grid at the moment, though slices can be split, merged, and tweaked (drag by the slice number on the sample view).

- modulators are applied either at each slice, ("slice" or "attack" mode) or at the start of the loop ("fire" or "loop"). Those modulators that are loaded at the loop will only be set at the start of the next cycle.

- 8 effects buses, each up to 4 fx, The "wheel" is the selector: the inner wheel selects a bus for a given slice, and the outer wheel selects a particular bus for editing. Time for delay and echo are tempo locked.

- in general, envelopes multiply and lfos add.

- a bank (a single file) consists of set of patches ... current state is not automatically saved to a patch, so remember to hit the save button before saving the bank, or use "save bank and state".

- the lower right corner hosts a basic patch sequencer. +/- add steps, and use spinner to select a patch (the blue button down there turns this on).

- rendered loops can be exported as wav files (via menu).

- currently only wav files supported :((( ... flac and ape should appear within a release or two. rex files probably never (proprietrary format meh)

- design paradigm is "immaterial design" ie if google thinks that lots of space with very little info is a good idea then their opinion is irrelevant.

Lots more to come on this one: a phrase sequencer, algorithmic playback control, and beat detection and more are on the drawing board. What is there in this release is just a framework for all the cool stuff.

I love bug reports and feature requests! So on the off chance you use it and something screws up, let me know and I'll try to make it suck a bit less on the next release.