Misha clock PPQ and t/g output questions

[dave999z]

Hello.  I have a couple clocking and t/g questions.

Question 1:

I am sending sending Misha a standard clock pulse to the external clock in.  I have external clock PPQ set to 1.  With the clock divider set at 1/1, the tone row advances one note for every 4 clock pulses Misha receives.  Shouldn’t it advance one note for every 1 pulse rather than every 4 pulses?  That’s how all my other Eurorack modules work.

Question 2:

With the clock divider set at 1/1, Misha sends out a t/g pulse every time the tone row advances to the next note (i.e., every four incoming clock pulses).

When I change the clock divider to 1/2, the tone row advances to the next note for every 2 clock pulses Misha receives, and Misha sends out a t/g pulse every time it advances to the next note.

When I change the clock divider to 1/4, the tone row advances to the next note for every 1 clock pulse Misha receives, however, Misha no longer sends out a t/g pulse every time it advances to the next note.  Instead, as soon as I change the clock divider to 1/4 the t/g output just goes high and stays there.  I have note length set to short, but it seems note length is based on a 1/1 clock and even when set to short it lasts longer than one quarter note (so never goes low).  Is there any way around this?  This seems like a bug or unnecessary limitation, unless I’m not understanding  something (entirely possible).

 

I just want to get it so Misha advances 1 note and sends out a t/g every time it receives 1 external clock pulse.  Is that possible?

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[tbskoglund]

Hello,

To answer question 1, the clock divider options on Misha refer to BPM, where 1 beat equals a quarter note. You have the correct external PPQ setting (1) to match up to your external clock. With this settings, if you set Misha’s clock divider to 1/4, that will make the notes on Misha trigger each time it receives a clock pulse. If you set this to 1/1, it will only trigger a note every 4 clock pulses.

For question 2, the note duration is based off the incoming clock pulses. It is a 1:1. Since, it is playing a note every single pulse, all durations will be equal.
So, Short = Med = Long, will all be one clock pulse. So, the LED never turns off and it only turns the previous note off when changing to the next note.

Perhaps you may find a better solution with your system by using Misha’s internal clock and syncing other devices to Misha. With the latest firmware, you can configure t/g output 3 to output clock pulses.

[dave999z]

Thank you for the response.

tbskoglund wrote:

You have the correct external PPQ setting (1) to match up to your external clock. With this settings, if you set Misha’s clock divider to 1/4, that will make the notes on Misha trigger each time it receives a clock pulse.

That makes sense and seems to be exactly how it’s working.

My only problem then is the behavior of Misha’s t/g output…

tbskoglund wrote:

the note duration is based off the incoming clock pulses. It is a 1:1. Since, it is playing a note every single pulse, all durations will be equal. So, Short = Med = Long, will all be one clock pulse. So, the LED never turns off and it only turns the previous note off when changing to the next note.

I don’t 100% follow this.  So with PPQ set to 1 and clock divider at 1/4, the sequence advances every time Misha receives a single clock pulse, but Misha does not output a t/g every time it advances (it just stays high)?  And it’s intended to be this way (the gate is designed to just stay high forever rather than retriggering on each note advance)?  That seems odd.  Is there some utility to that I’m not thinking of?  Please consider this a feature request for future firmware — that Misha send out a trigger/gate every time the sequence advances one note (but not on inserted rests), even when set to 1 PPQ and 1/4 clock division.  As it stands it behaves differently from every other Eurorack module I have, and makes it an oddity to sync with other clocked modules.

tbskoglund wrote:

Perhaps you may find a better solution with your system by using Misha’s internal clock and syncing other devices to Misha. With the latest firmware, you can configure t/g output 3 to output clock pulses.

I unfortunately can’t do this.  I have Pam’s clocking numerous other modules and don’t want it dependent on an external clock (Misha).  Misha is not the center of the whole system and won’t always be running.

[tbskoglund]

You’re welcome.

Using an external clock with PPQ set to 1 and clock divider at 1/4, the sequence advances every time Misha receives a single clock pulse, and will also output a t/g for every pulse. The output will remain high until Misha receives the next clock pulse, and then it will retrigger. This is how it is working with my setup.

Could you please make a short video showing what you are describing? It seems that we are not experiencing the same thing if you say the output goes high and stays that way indefinitely. It should be retriggering for every clock pulse received.

 

[dave999z]

Certainly, I will make a video and post back here.

 

One interim question… it’s labelled a “t/g” output, but those are technically different things.  Does Misha make any distinction between a trigger and a gate?  I wonder if my envelop generator module (only one I have tried with Misha so far is TipTop/Buchla 281t) expects only a quick trigger pulse, whereas a gate that stays high for the duration of the note and then only drops low for a tiny moment before going high again is not working to retrigger the envelope.

In other words I wonder if the issue is the difference between…

quick trigger (mostly stays low, briefly goes high):

____-_______-________-________-________-________-_____

versus gate (mostly stays high, briefly goes low):

—-_————-_————_————_————_————_——

 

When I make the video I’ll also try sending Misha’s t/g to a different envelope generator module in case that’s the culprit.

 

[tbskoglund]

The outputs of Misha will always be gates, the length will be determined by how long you press/hold the interval button or the short/med/long setting.

The inputs can be configured to be either triggers or gate/cv pairs, with a long list of options to customize how these work.

Your hypothesis may be correct, in the setup you are using the signal is mostly high and only goes low for a brief moment, so that may be throwing off your envelope generator.

 

[dave999z]

OK, reporting back.  No video needed.  That was indeed the issue.  With PPQ=1 and clock divider = 1/4, when I send Misha’s t/g output to MI Stages envelope generator the envelope fires on every note.  Apparently the TT/Buchla 281t does not detect very short low gate pulses (so behaves as though gate just remains high continuously).

Thanks for your help in solving.

I will preserve my request though… it would be great as a future feature if there were some control of the gate length even with PPQ=1 and cd=1/4.  (Some sequencers even have per step gate length control, but just a global control over gate length or ability to switch to short pulse triggers would be great.). I would think PPQ=1 and cd=1/4 is the most common setting since that’s how Misha plays one note in response to every incoming clock pulse, which is how many (most?) other Eurorack modules behave.

Interestingly, when I look at Misha’s t/g output on my scope with PPQ=1 and cd=1/4 I cannot even see the low gate moment at the end of each note.  On the scope it just looks like a continuous high gate.  (Though as I said, Stages is apparently seeing it.)

Cheers.

[tbskoglund]

Thanks for reporting back. Glad we were able to get to the bottom of this. I can log this as a request.

This may not be ideal, but if you first send your clock to a clock multiplier before it goes to Misha, then you could set Misha’s clock divider to 1/2 and that should work. It’s only the 1/4 setting where the gates don’t work with the gate length parameter.

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