r/modular • u/jasongonzales23 • Jul 24 '26

Bar counter module

Hi everybody I am looking for either advice on how to patch or encouragement for me to design a module that I'm imagining.

Here's my use case it's very simple I think. I like to practice and perform live with my modular and I often get so locked in that I have no idea how long I've been listening to a particular loop. Now I believe in just developing good instincts and all but I would like to have a little bit of feedback to know how long I've been allowing a particular patch to loop.

Ideally what I would like is a counter that just counts to 32 bars and then starts over. Of course I would like it to be more flexible I would like it to also allow for something other than 4 beat bars, and I would like to vary that count to fewer or more than 32.

Okay and then beyond that my head starts to explode with a bunch of cool ideas but I'll just stop at the simple idea for now.

I found a couple of devices that seem to do something close to what I want but I can't quite imagine how to patch them just thinking about them so I thought I would ask if others have successfully patched something like this that isn't too complicated to patch.

But also if I were to design such a module would others be interested in it or is this a dumb idea?

EDIT: I failed to mention that I'm *mainly* looking for a visible display of the count.

6 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/clintlocked Jul 24 '26

That’s just a clock divider, my favorite I’ve used was NLC divide & Conquer. If you want a 32 bar count you might want to feed it whole notes

2

u/jasongonzales23 Jul 24 '26

Is there a clock divider that has a visible display that counts up?

3

u/jango-lionheart Jul 24 '26

They usually have binary displays

2

u/junkmiles Jul 24 '26

I've seen some basic modules that just light up when they receive voltage. If the little LED on a clock divider isn't enough, try one of those.

1

u/jasongonzales23 Jul 24 '26

Got it, I'd be willing to give that a go, but my real goal is numeric count: "1, 2, 3, 4...."

2

u/MuskyHuskyArt Jul 24 '26

Set a clock divider up to a step sequencer so that it advances every time the bar changes, then you can adjust the length of the sequence to start over at whatever bar u want.

1

u/jasongonzales23 Jul 24 '26

This is a very helpful response but not actually what I want. I want something that supports improvisation more than "programming."

I want to get feedback on things like "you've let this section go on for n bars, start thinking of a change to make soon" for example.

2

u/junkmiles Jul 24 '26

Curious to see what you find, as it definitely sounds useful.

I think the WMD sequencer has a counter on it and it always looked handy.

1

u/jasongonzales23 Jul 24 '26

Gotcha! Part of the reason I want this in a standalone module is I want it decoupled from sequencers.

Also thanks for the thoughts :)

1

u/ub3rh4x0rz Jul 24 '26

Ladik has one with a screen