SETI - Deep Space Percussion Receiver
SETI is built around one idea: a rhythm should be something you can reach for again.
Most generative devices give you a dice roll. You hit randomize, you like what you
hear, and now you have a problem — you have to record it before it's gone. SETI has
no dice. Its pattern is a pure function of six numbers, and Live saves all six with
your set. Find something you like and you already have it.
That has a consequence worth sitting with: every pattern change is automatable.
Draw GENERATION into an automation lane and the rhythm evolves across your
arrangement — and plays back identically every time you press play. No recorded MIDI.
No frozen loop. The device rebuilds the part from scratch on every pass and gets the
same answer.
THE SOUND
Two independent voices, each choosing from twelve synthesis engines — filtered noise,
shift-register grit, bit-crushed digital, six-partial metal, FM bursts, pulsar trains,
resonant crackle, and a swept layer that moves during the hit. Every engine responds
to four macros: SIGNAL, TUNE, COLOR and MOD.
The twelve engines sit on a ring, ordered by ear so neighbours sound related. SCAN
decides how far a voice wanders from the engine you chose as it plays — closed, it
stays put; open it, and each hit may come from somewhere nearby. The movement is
derived from transport position, so a four-bar loop repeats its wandering exactly
instead of drifting somewhere new every pass.
Velocity does more than set level. It shortens the decay, darkens the tone through a
filter that tracks the engine's own frequency, and drives a soft clipper that adds
harmonics where a filter has nothing to remove. Ghost notes behave like ghost notes.
THE TRANSMISSION
Eight kinds of signal: morse, binary, prime, pulsar, beacon, burst, drift, and
contact — which builds its own motif memory and recalls it, so phrases come back.
In morse you can choose the word being sent: SETI, SOS, HI, LIFE, ECHO, WOW, PING,
CALL, LOCK, SIGNAL. A dash is one long note, not a stutter of short ones.
INTELLIGENCE sets how much structure the signal has, from scattered noise to
symmetry and call-and-response. DENSITY works in both directions from centre —
below, it thins by removing the quietest hits so the accents survive; above, it
fills the rests with ghosts. LOCK decides how tightly the receiver holds the grid;
open it and hits scatter late, deterministically, like a signal losing lock.
YOU CAN ALSO JUST PLAY IT
Set MODE to MIDI and the generator stops. C1 fires Voice A, C#1 fires Voice B, from
a keyboard, a sequencer, or a clip — with every sound-design control still live.
HYBRID lets you play over the top of the pattern.
One button writes the pattern into a MIDI clip on SETI's own track, with velocities
and note lengths intact and LOCK's timing captured as played. For when you want to
edit the rhythm by hand or hand it to something else.
WHAT YOU SEE
Eleven displays, and none of them are decoration. The receiver waterfall's horizontal
axis is the engine ring, so you watch a carrier sit still with SCAN closed and drift
across the band as you open it. The velocity panel plots what the three velocity dials
actually do to a hit. The clock panel shows Live's transport with every hit marked by
how far it landed from its step. If a control is doing something, there is a place to see it.
