Triggerfish

Sequencers you play by hand

Triggerfish is a set of small machines for making music: one for finding chords and arranging progressions, one for patterns on a grid with several playheads. They send MIDI to your synths, drive a modular, and combine in a live-coding editor that speaks Tidal.

The Triggerfish dashboard: Vetula, Odonus and Limulus on the left, their notes flowing through the browser and the engine, Architeuthis, to MIDI interfaces, instruments and finally to your ears. Two loops, drawn as starfish, play on the engine. — The dashboard of a running rig. Every machine on the left, every note's path to the right: through the page or the engine, out of an interface, into an instrument, to your ears. The two starfish are loops playing on the engine, one recorded from each machine.

Try it in your browser

Nothing to install. Both play through the browser's own electric piano; in Chrome or Edge, allow MIDI and they play your synths instead.

These are a taster, and a small one. Each machine runs on its own here, without the rig that makes them an instrument. In the browser there is:

no Ableton Link: no shared tempo with anything else
no machines working together: Odonus can't follow Vetula's key or chords
no MIDI out in Safari, which has no Web MIDI
no river and no loops: nothing played is kept
no Tidal: no Limulus, so Vetula's progressions can't become voices

But it is the same code as the installed rig, page for page, so what you try here is how the machines work.

Vetula

chords

Find chords on a lattice built from your key and scale, or in nine banks
Hover a chord and press space to hear it; shift-click to take it
Arrange the progression on a score: alternatives for every bar, revoicing, a rhythm tapped in

vetula.trigger-fish.app →

Odonus

patterns

A grid of notes with several playheads moving through it at once
Each playhead a voice of its own, going forward, back or pendulum
Press Play, and change the grid while it runs

odonus.trigger-fish.app →

Vetula's score: a progression on a grand staff, and under it the chosen bar's substitutes, variations and relatives; Limulus open on the right — **Arranging, in Vetula.** The progression on a score, the chosen bar's alternatives underneath, and Limulus beside it, where the progression becomes voices.

Watch

Short films of the rig in use are on their way: a progression found on the lattice, voiced in Limulus, looped from the river and heard through the modular.

The Atlantis Gazette

The rig explained as a broadsheet: who's who on the reef, solo or Atlantis, and how a note finds its way to your ears.

Read the Gazette →

The whole rig

In the browser you have the two machines on their own. Installed, they join the rest of the reef: the parts below run on your own computer, beside your instruments. An install guide is coming.

Limulus, the editor: drums, voices and loops written as Tidal — **Limulus**, the editor: text in, sound out.

Balistes: Grids-style drum patterns and a sixteen-lane drum sequencer — **Balistes**, drums.

Selene: banks of eight LFOs, euclidean gates and notes, each bank on a module's jacks — **Selene**, signals for the modular.

Conspicillum: a sample read as a one-bar tape by a wandering head, drawn as a ring — **Conspicillum**, a loupe for samples.

Limulus — the editor. Voices, loops and every machine, written in Tidal.
Architeuthis — the engine. TidalCycles on the BEAM, playing every machine on Ableton Link's clock.
The river — everything played, kept. Mark the good bits, loop them, from the page or from Limulus.
The dashboard — the chart above, live: every stream, and what is broken.
Balistes — drums.
Selene — LFOs, clocks and envelopes for the modular, over an ES-9 or FH-2.
Conspicillum — a loupe for samples, as a grain cloud.
Quadrat — samples an instrument across its parameters, and keeps what comes back.