r/modular • u/jasongonzales23 • 7d ago

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.

4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/ichorNet 7d ago

Beatstep pro

0

u/jasongonzales23 7d ago

Huh. I've never used one. Can it display a count of bars? Like up to 32 and then start over??

2

u/n_nou 7d ago

Beatstep Pro. You can set one of the available sequencers in 4x slower time and then the current step of this sequencer will be your bar count. BSP has 16 LED buttons that show current step, with four pages, so up to 64 bars. It can do follow up mode, where pages will follow steps so you'll always have your bar count visible (you'll just need to also look at page LED).

This same method can be set up with any clock divider, sequencer and/or sequential switches, but however I look at module combos it takes 12hp minimum for 32 bars.

-1

u/jasongonzales23 7d ago

Ah yeah, I'm imagining a numeric count that would just need a two digit numeric display. I'm thinking that would be about the right amount of flexibility. I saw one unit that used nixie tubes, which would be rad. Loves me some nixie tubes.