Concept Overview
Bloom is a fractal sequencer that uses a user-constructed sequence to recursively gen-
erate a tree of related subsequences that can be strung together to create large musical
sequences that relate back to the originally programmed sequence.
Everytime the trunk is adjusted, or mutated (via the mutation control) the entire tree is
regenerated.
First, the user will construct a “Trunk”. In this example, lets say this is simply an eight-step
major scale starting at 0V, climbing up to 1V.
For the point of this example, we’ll set Branches to around 11 O’Clock so that the trunk, and
two branches play.
The trunk ends at a fork between one of two possible paths. If the path knob is below half,
the sequence will continue up and to the left, otherwise it will continue up and to the right.
The subsequence that follows the trunk will be most closely related to the original sequence.
This tranformation will be in the form of one of the following modifications which will be
described in detail below:
• Transposition
• Inversion
• Reversal
• Mutation
At the end of branch 1, (i.e. the first related subsequence), the Path setting is again checked
to see if it follows the path up and to the left or up and to the right from the current branch.
This next branch will be related to the previous subsequence,
not
the trunk sequence. Al-
lowing for the musical evolution of a simple melody.
By crafting an initial sequence, and using path and branches, a huge variety of melodic
content can be created.
On top of this, other settings including ratchets, and slew are factored into the generation of
these branches.
Below is a figure displaying how the path control works with Branches set to 4. The module
is capable of generating a tree up to 7 branches deep, for a total number of 128 paths
through the tree.
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