PW
The PW button has 3 menus under it as well, pulse widths and random settings. In addition, the Random Constraint System has sub pages for constraining the random features.
PW Page 1 PULSEWIDTHS
Each channel stores its own pulse width settings.The pulse width settings aect every step the same. You can manually select the pulse width or chose from a few predened values. For Complex Lanes, setting a pulse width of 1 will
tie steps together. For the simple clock, setting a pulse width of 1 will cause the channel to always be high unless you are using random density.
Note that logic functions use the pulse width version of the steps, so having diering pulse widths and using logic can generate some interesting results. Also, a pulse width of 0 will cause nothing to be generating.
This is important to know if you are using CV to change pulse width in the negative direction.
PW Page 2 LANE RANDOM CONTROL
Random setting are stored PER preset, this allows an amazing amount of exibility so you can alter in a preset recall the random settings to be dierent in lanes in a bank. Each lane allows you to control what gets randomized if any of
the randomizing methods are invoked (from a menu, or from dierent trigger congurations). When the LANE RANDOM CONTROL is active, it will replace any displayed page with the RANDOM CONTROL MATRIX so you can see all
random relationships.
For complex lanes, you can randomize:
Steps: O, All (full random), euclidean, or euclidean + oset so the rst step is not always one. Note that random always generates for the currently ACTIVE area of gates (length) and copies the pattern generated as many times as it
can into the inactive portion of the 16 steps. If CV is being use to modulate length, the length at the time random is called will be used.
Dir: O, Direction and Direction + One Shot.This allows you to keep One Shot out of the list if you don’t want to randomize to that.
TB: timebase, LEN: Length, and PW: PulseWidth are simple toggles to turn their random on or o.
All O will shut o all complex random settings for all 4 lanes.
All Rnd will copy the random settings for the currently selected complex lane and copy them into the other 3 complex lanes.
For simple lanes, you can randomize:
Src1, Src2, Logic,TB, PW, and Density. Again, these are all toggles and the All O and All Rnd buttons will work for the simple lanes just like they worked for the complex lanes.
PW Page 3 RANDOM CONSTRAINTS
GateStorm allows you to use a new concept in random generation called a random constraint system. What this means is that you can select what random values are acceptable to be selected from when you invoke random on a
parameter. Using the random constraint system, the lane random control needs to be active for the parameter you are randomizing.
When you go to the RANDOM CONSTRAINTS page, an overview of all the constraints will be shown. The data is intentionally sparsely labeled so it can t on the screen. Depending on whether you have a complex or simple lane
selected, the selections at the bottom of the screen will indicate which pages you can bring up to make changes to the available random selections. Like the LANE RANDOM CONTROL, RANDOM CONSTRAINTS are stored PER patch.
Some of the pages have been split into multiple pages because the number of parameters to select is greater than the eight buttons. Once you select to change a random constraint, like TB#1, when you press the PW button, it will
cycle to TB#2 then back to the RANDOM CONSTRAINTS page. You will also notice that the Complex LENGTH page shares the same page as Simple Source INVERT. We tried to minimize the number of pages as much as possible.
For Complex lanes;TB and Len work the same, when you bring up the selections, you can decide which of the time base settings or which of the lengths you want to select from. This way, if you want random to only select between *2
and *4, then you just leave those active. One use of this is if you want to ignore the odd divisions or really long divisions from getting selected. Or maybe you want to ignore the fast multipliers as well like *16.
PW and Den work a little dierent. They allow you to set the upper and lower range that well be randomized between. For PW, you can select from 0 to 32, which will be all fractional amounts over 32. So, 16/32 is the same at 1/2.
Density works by indicating what density of steps you want to generate. So for full random, if you select 50% as your max and min, for an 8 length pattern, it will ALWAYS have 4 steps randomly on. For Euclidean with no oset, setting
max and min to 50% would always produce the same patterns since Euclidean is a specic distribution of steps (and you are setting it to 4 with that constraint). What is nice in Euclidean constraints is if you want to keep the upper and
lower bounds from being to sparse of too full. Again, the density is relative to the pattern length as well.
For the Simple lanes;TB, Src1, Src2, Logic all work under the same mechanism. Likewise PW and Density work similar. For Simple, density controls the randomness of if a simple clock is going to produce a pulse or not based on it’s
timebase. Invert indicates if you want the Src1 and Src2 values to also randomize whether they are inverted or not. If both of them are o, then the randomizer will not randomize the invert of either Src1, Src2 or both.
GLOBAL
The next menu set is to the right of the encoder, labeled GLOBAL [preset] and [trans].This menu has 3 pages that handle a bunch of global changes you might want to make. Let’s go through each of the pages.
The rst page GLOBAL ALL modied ALL the channels that the settings make sense to apply. Note the selection box is gone when this page is active since everything is aected by any parameter changes here.
Length: Changes the length of ALL complex channels together.
TB: Changes the time base of ALL channels (both complex and simple) together.
PW: Changes the PW of ALL channels (both complex and simple) together. Note that the values won’t actually change till the master clock (represented by the white LED at the top left of the module) goes high. This is to prevent
glitching in the outputs as you make changes. Note that this snapping occurs whether the channels are global is in sync or not.You will notice that while you move the PW setting, you will see a blue representation behind the white of
each channel showing you want the channel is going to snap to when the clock rises.
All O:Turn o All complex steps.
Random: Will invoke random for EVERY channel based on what random settings are active for the bank (under the PW menu).
T1->All: This will load the template 1 settings for EVERY channel.
BPM: This allows you to set the BPM between 20 and 400.This value will be updated if using the tap tempo or the sampled clock input in the top left labeled CLOCK.
A note on parameter changes. When you make changes with these controls and channels are set to SYNC, you might see the wiper snap forward or backwards. The timing system will ALWAYS try and keep the clock edges are accurate
as possible. Since we allow you to make changes to these settings not snapped, so you don’t have to wait to change things on really slow clocks, this is the compromise that had to be made. If you want to make changes that are
always only done at the master clock sync point, you just set up a CV to do the change and have SYNC on for the lane.
The second page is the SELECT PRESET page.This allows you to change to any of the 8 presets in the current bank.You will see the preset go red rst then to yellow as it changes the preset at the master clock rise (unless you have
global sync o). In the global modulations section, you can nd out how to change the patch using a variety of methods with CV and GATE.
For the complex lanes we have three columns of trigger information, Play (>), Random (?) and Reset (R):
Play:The top of the 3 bars represents LPlay, and the color will correspond to the lane (Like, yellow is lane 1). The second bar indicates the play state of the global play. When global play control is congured properly for this lane, a
green or red box will be shown in the second spot. The color represents if the lane is playing or stopping.The third bar indicated if global play control is turned on. If you do not see 1 or 2 dots in the third bar, then that indicates that the
global trigger for GPlay is not congured to in the global trigger settings. When you modify the global play trigger setting, you will see all the lanes change to reect what global trigger they would all listen to if GPLAY is active on a
lane.
Random: Random has 3 bars. The top bar represents the local trigger color if activated.The second bar represents the GRnd setting of the lane. It can select either global trigger 1 or 2. The third bar represents the bank global random
and aects ALL lanes if active. Again, it will show 1 or 2 dots representing the global trigger associated with it.
Reset: Data is show in exactly the same way as the Random description above.
For the simple lanes, the same information is shown minus the local trigger setting since none of the simple lanes have an associated local trigger.
The last bit of data is over in the Bank Settings on the right, the patch changing mode will be shown above the Free/Sync indicator.
NOTE: If you hold the DISPLAY button in for a few seconds, the Bank/Preset text will turn RED.This turns o ALL modulations in the system. This include CV and triggers.
This is useful for when you want to go make changes to a patch but don’t want to have to go in and disable CV or trigger settings OR remove cables.
PRESET/GLOBAL
The last thing to cover is the Preset system and all the global system settings.
To invoke the PRESET/SETTINGS system, press the encoder once.The menu will come up and replace the contents of the screen. First, let’s go through the PRESET system control rst.
Read Preset+Bank:This basically loads up a new bank, and, allows you to pick which preset to start with. Once a bank is loaded, all 8 presets are in memory. Note that the system remembers the last bank you loaded and starts with
that bank next time the system is powered on. Loading a bank will replace all patches in memory with that bank.
Read Template:Will allow you to read any of the 8 templates into the current preset number. This is NOT saved into the presets so if you change presets with either CV control or with the preset buttons on the GLOBAL menu page 2, the
system will go back to the last saved state.
Write Preset Only:This will just write the preset into the bank/preset location you pick. If the preset location is in the current bank, the system will go to that preset. Note that the‘Write -> All Presets”button after you have selected the
Write Preset Selection, this will write the preset you are trying to save to ALL preset locations in the selected bank. Use the encoder to cycle through banks/presets.This added feature was designed to ll out a bank with a default
pattern that you could then go and tweak.
Write Both (P+G): Is a macro function to write a preset to a location AND write the bank settings to the selected bank. Again, a helper function is included to ll all the pattern locations of the bank you selected.
Write Global Only: Will write just the global changes to the bank you selected.This is going to store the Bank CV/Trig settings.
Write Template: Use this to save a preset to any of the 8 template locations. Remember thatTemplate 1 is used for all the quick functions in dierent menus (T1->) as default values.
Copy: Allows copying Preset to Preset, Bank to Bank, or Template to Template.
Last, is the >System Settings selection. Selecting open or pressing the encoder will bring up the SYSTEM SETTINGS. Once in the SYSTEM SETTINGS, use the encoder button to go back and forth between pages 1 and 2.
Page 1 has a variety of settings, let’s go through each of those to understand what they control:
Show Splash: This turns o the splash screen so when you start up GateStorm, you don’t have to wait for the awesome lightening animation to show.
Key Latch:This setting allows you to setup GateStorm so that if you want to change a setting, you have to hold the menu selection down while you make changes.This means you can shorten the interaction with the GUI since you don’t
have to press to exit, but it also means you have to use two hands to make changes.We recommend for beginners to leave key latch on as it is easier to use that way.
Show Step #s:This setting turns on and o the step number display super imposed on the actual complex lanes. If you nd it too cluttered with it on, you can turn it o here.
Brightness: If the amazing display is too bright for you, you can take it down all the way to 5% (in steps of 5%).This also can reduce current usage by the display LED if you are current limited in your case.The display is really ecient so
it might not give too much back, but sometimes, just a little can help.
Clock Input: The module can listen to clock signals on the gate bus. Certain manufacturers have begun implementing a gate bus clock. When this is active, the front clock input AND the tap tempo button are disabled. As the gate bus
clock source modules enter manufacturing, we might change the functionality in a rmware update as we see how the module performs.
Clk Divider: This setting ends up confusing a lot of people in how it aects the whole system. Basically, if your clock source that you like to use is too fast, you can use this integrated clock dividers to basically skip clocks. You can select a
division of 1 to 32 with this setting.Where this can get complicated is that the tap tempo is a hardwired connection to the actual clock input. This means if you select clock division here, you also get that eect on tapping. So if you
have the system setup to use 4 samples for each clock, and you have a division of 2, you will need to hit the button 8 times AND it will be half the speed that you tapped. Generally speaking, this setting is for when you are going to drive
with a specic clock and should be set back to 1 when using tap tempo.
Clk Samples: All clocks transferred by analog are going to have a little drift to them, some very tiny. In addition, tapping a tempo can have some timing dierences as well.This setting determines how many clock samples are used to
generate an average to set the current BPM. By default we use four samples, which gives in our opinion the best accuracy of a clock and controls the speed at which the clock changes. Of course at really slow BPM it takes a lot longer for
the clock to change so if you are working at the lower end, you might want to drop it down to 2. Also, if you use the integrated clock divider, you have to multiply that number by the Clk Samples to get how many pulses are going to be
required to set the clock rate. Also, not all of them are sampled, since the clock divider is used to ignore pulses essentially.
CV Average: Like the Clk Samples, this controls how the values are averages out as they come in.This smooths out any noise in the sampling circuitry. The default is 16 samples.This is a linear response to incoming data.
CV Input Slew: This works a little dierent than CV Average, it’s basically a software low pass lter. You can set a value between 0 (no slew) and 10 (max slew).We recommend 4. Basically, this rounds out CV change as it approaches it’s
nal value. Given most of the CV steps are large, the setting most aected by this will be pulse width, which has 32 steps.
CV Hysteresis:This controls the guard band around CV values that keep a CV from switching back and forth rapidly between settings when your CV is right at the boundary.We recommend using 3.
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