Jacquard vs 2099 Techno

Jacquard is an experimental tile-based music sequencer. Instead of arranging notes on conventional tracks, you build sequences by placing and stacking tiles on a two-dimensional grid. Notes, parameter locks, gates, and branches can be combined to create patterns that evolve and change as they repeat. At its simplest it works like a step sequencer: place note tiles along a lane and they play in turn. Stack them vertically and they sound together as a chord. Then the other tiles go into the stack, and the pattern stops standing still. TILES ON A PLANE - Note - a letter, an octave, and a length in steps - Absolute and Relative Lock - set or shift sound parameters for one step only - Cycle Gate - let a note through only on the laps you name, a period from 2 to 32 - Chance Gate - let it through at a percentage - Jump and Jump Target - fly to another lane, for branches and alternative routes - Order matters: a stack is read top to bottom, so a gate placed partway down a chord divides it, and a lock colours everything read after it LANES THAT RUN THEIR OWN WAY Eight channels, each with a sound of its own, and as many lanes as you like in each. Every lane has its own step length, from 1/1 down to 1/64, and its own length in steps - so polyrhythms are just two lanes of different lengths running over one tempo. Dedicate a lane to accents or parameter changes and it colours the lanes below it. A TWO-OPERATOR FM VOICE Every channel is one FM patch: a carrier and a modulator, with envelopes on amplitude, on modulation depth, and on pitch. Fifteen parameters in all - and every one of them is exactly what a parameter lock can reach, so a single step can take hold of anything about a channel. Twenty-four voices are shared across the whole score, with unison thickening a part without spending a second voice. EFFECTS AND MIX - One reverb and one tempo-synced delay for the whole piece, with per-note send amounts that locks can reach - Solo and mute on all eight channels at once - A scale keyboard that snaps notes to the key you choose, without rewriting a single tile - A limiter on the output, threshold, attack and release PLAY IT WITH YOUR HANDS Twelve Live FX buttons act only while they are held, on whatever the sequence is about to play: both sends, stab and sustain, octave up and down, falls and rises, and four rolls that catch what just played and repeat it in place. Nothing is written to the score, so nothing is undone. On a touch screen you can hold one per finger. Loading a score while another is playing does not cut it off. The change waits for the master lane to come round, and from that instant the new score runs - no gap, no overlap, and the mix and the Live FX keep working the whole time.

2099 Techno writes complete tracks. Press generate and you get 76 bars with an intro, builds, two main sections, a breakdown and an outro, played by a virtual-analog engine and a 909-style drum machine. Bass, acid, stabs, pad, a lead line and the kit, through a dub delay, chorus and reverb. Nothing is sampled. Every note is made on the fly and no two tracks come out the same. The music comes from chaos maths. Three Lorenz attractors shape the melody, the rhythm and the mood. Three separate logistic maps run underneath the drums, the bass and the acid line, so they wander independently: turn the logistic control down and the hats and perc repeat every bar, turn it up and they never do. Chaos on its own is noise, so a small model filters it. It gets rewarded for consonant intervals and rehearses two hundred notes over the changes before it writes anything. The CHAOS / TASTE slider decides how much say each one gets. Eight styles, and they are properly different. Detroit rolls an off-beat bass under syncopated stabs. Dub Techno holds one chord for four bars and lets the delay do the work. Acid runs a 303 line with slides and accents. Hard pushes past 140 with a Reese bass and the drive up. Minimal takes most of it away. Every track is built from its seed. Write the seed down and you can have that exact track again, note for note, whenever you want it. You can play over it, too. The pads are the notes of the track's key rather than a piano keyboard, so nothing you touch is wrong, and the sixteen-step lane runs in time with the track and follows your host. Both play any part you like: bass, acid, stabs, pad or lead, through that part's sound and out on its MIDI channel. Choose which sections the lane plays in - just the breakdown, say - and preview it on its own without starting the track. Turn on RADIO and it keeps playing, picking a new key, mode, style, sound kit and tempo for each track. You also get: • 8 styles, 6 dark modes, 12 keys, tempo and density • Two-oscillator analog voice with sub, noise, resonant filter and glide • 22 presets and 9 sound kits, from Warehouse to Game Boy, plus random patch • Six-part mixer, dub delay, chorus, plate reverb and a global sweep filter • A PLAY panel: pads in the track's own key, and a 16-step lane with accent and slide, running in time with the track and only in the sections you pick • MIDI in, so your keyboard plays whichever part you have selected • MIDI export: six tracks, one per part • Live spectrum, waveform and a view of the chaos engine at work Two Audio Units, an instrument and a MIDI processor. Each part sends on its own MIDI channel, drums on 10, so one instance can drive six instruments. The MIDI version passes your keyboard through instead of swallowing it. Both follow your host's tempo and transport. One install registers both. The app is free and nothing in it is held back. Using the Audio Units inside other apps is a one-time purchase, and each AUv3 session plays for two minutes first so you can try them properly.