Tips posted in one of video comments:
Xynthesizr tips:
Conway’s Game of Life is just one type of Life. You can select other rules, and even cooler, you can create your own with custom birth and survival rules! That said, Life in the morph section is fun, but more in an academic way than in a purely musical one (IMO)
However, the “Rand” setting between Off and Life, is truly musically useful. Here you set the “Chance” of a random change (between 0.00, aka no change; and 1.00, where things change on each cycle through the pattern. So 0.50 means 50% of the time on a new cycle there will be a change.)
What’s really cool is that you can change the amount of change for X and Y axis independently. The numbers go from 0 (no change) to 16 (meaning the note will move up to 16 steps away in that axis) Since you can set different amounts to the X and Y axis you can control the type of randomization you get. E.g. if you set X to some value, but Y to zero, you will keep the same pitches in your pattern, but the rhythm will change. If you set X to zero, but Y to some value, the rhythm stays the same, but the pitch will change.
What I find works best is to select a small Custom area for the randomization (usually in an upper octave) and set the Chance to a low value and either the X or Y to a small value, while the other remains zero. What you get is a pattern that mostly repeats, but every once in a while a subtle change happens. IMO subtlety in random events is what makes them magical.
The coolest features of Xynthesizr however are the transposition options.
1- you can create your own scales by setting the number of semitones between steps. Because you set the number of steps and transpositions between steps you can create complex, possibly non-repeating scales (based on 12TET). It’s not microtonal, you can’t shift notes off of 12TET (unless you set a receiving synth to a microtonal scale), but it allows for complex transpositions. E.g. create a custom scale where step 1 (the interval up from your root) is set to 1 semitone. Step 2 is up 2 semitones. Step 3, 3; step 4, 4; and step 5, 5. If your root was C0 you would have a scale that goes: C0, C#0, D#0, F#0, A#0. Then the next grouping would be D#1, E1, F#1, A1, C#2, and so on.
2- each repeating grouping (an octave in a traditional scale, but anything in a custom scale) can be routed to a separate MIDI output channel. Each grouping is individually addressable, so you could have most set to Ch1, but the second grouping set to Ch 3 and the 5th to Ch2.
3- Pressing the Key button (D0 in what’s shown in the video) brings you to the transpositions page. Here you can set the root note and octave. But best of all, you can adjust the scale mode to musically transpose your pattern to that related scale mode. Since you can create those scales, you can create very interesting transpositions, but even using traditional scales, you get very musical results. This transposition can be controlled by incoming MIDI notes, so you can have Xynthesizr follow another sequencer. Add in some subtle randomization and route the outputting notes to various MIDI channels and you get a very sophisticated sequencing system.
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