I received my 40h last Tuesday. I have a lot of interesting projects in mind, but the first thing I wanted to design was an instrument intended to stimulate an interest of music in my children. I envisioned a seven rows of seven sequences that could be filtered modally. One would select a master key and mode, and the top row of buttons would transpose via scale degree within that mode. Each sequence has a length parameter and while all sequences are locked to a common pulse, they can be started at any point and loop independently/polyrhythmically.
Except for the drum samples, the sound sources in the video example are entirely analog: Minimoog Voyager, and Doepfer modular. The first thing you hear is the Voyager. The second entrance is Plan B Model 15 oscillator filtered through a Plan B low pass gate - producing a typical wood/plucked sound. The Plan B is FM'd by another oscillator whose pitch is controlled by yet another row.
Originally I was thinking there would be no other user interface except the 40h itself. The sequences would load with a random assortment of data and aesthetic decisions from that point on would be carried out by the operator. That functionality is intact, and I added some user interface that allows one to customize the randomization to achieve more musical results. I also added an editor that brings up what the most recent sequence playing and allows step time entry via MIDI keyboard.
I really like how the 40h decouples the LEDs from the buttons. This was definitely the right thing to do as the behavior of the buttons in ksd is outside the scope of what could be defined with the included mapd software. Yes, there are standard radio buttons, momentary and toggles, but the buttons themselves are context-sensitive. The sequence latch buttons determine how the buttons on that row behave. There are three modes: touch, which plays the sequence for as long as one olds the button, phrase, which plays the sequence, then shuts itself off, and latch, which plays the sequence in a loop until either the button is pressed again, or if the latch button is disengaged.
My only quibble with the 40h is the lack of velocity and pressure. This really cements its usefulness in one specific area and severely limits its use as an expressive musical instrument. Because the 40h gets so much right (design, aesthetics, materials, philosophy, open-source), the tragic omission of pressure and velocity is all the more difficult to take. Huge vectors of expression are unavailable. This oversight is justified by the designers by stating the hardware itself could be hacked to support velocity. Small comfort as one really wants their unit to be at parity with everything else in the field to ensure support and compatibility.
