What is Modulor

Modulor is an application developed specifically for the Percussa AudioCubes hardware. It lets you record, loop, process and assemble musical information, to quickly develop musical ideas.

The software works with your existing MIDI keyboard and controllers, professional audio interface (CoreAudio or ASIO) and software virtual instruments (VSTs or AudioUnits).

Loops in the software can be easily put together by putting their physical representation together (AudioCubes). Powerful MIDI effects are available to process the recorded or live MIDI information.

Interacting with software instruments using your hands is easy using the onboard sensors of AudioCubes. Colours can be used on AudioCubes to colour-code looping recordings or MIDI effects.

When you’re done, save your work in bank files or export the result to a MIDI file, ready to be used in your DAW or other software, where more tracks can be added and you can start working on a mix.

What can I do with Modulor

Modulor is primarily intended to develop musical ideas, by recording initial loops and input from your favourite MIDI controller, and assembling and processing those use the AudioCubes hands-on hardware interface.

Because there is a one-to-one relationship between the loops and cubes, or MIDI effects and cubes, experimenting with effects and loops is a matter of creating AudioCubes networks on your table, and changing the configuration of the networks by moving and rotating AudioCubes.

This lets you listen more and creates room for happy accidents and results you didn’t expect, taking your focus away from the computer screen.

We designed Modulor with the professional composer / music producer in mind. You can read more about using Modulor with AudioCubes in composition here.

How does Modulor work

Up to 16 AudioCubes can be connected via USB to a computer running Modulor. The software runs by itself, no need to run other software simultaneously. No drivers needed to connect AudioCubes, the software talks directly to the hardware and looks and works the same on Mac and PC. Only one AudioCube needs to be connected, Modulor is one of the first applications capable of detecting and communicating with a network of AudioCubes wirelessly, through a single cabled AudioCube.

Modulor can record MIDI from your favourite MIDI keyboard or controller. Each of the AudioCubes connected to modulor has a loop recorder and player, so you can record loops into a cube. You can link a cube to a software instrument, and bring cubes in and out of the network to mute / unmute a “looping track”.

Besides that, you can also process the loops and live MIDI input using multiple MIDI effects, such as an arpeggiator, chord generator, echo and transposer. Each cube can be set to run one of those effects. By combining multiple of these cubes in a network, you can create powerful MIDI processing networks, which work on your prerecorded or live MIDI input.

Modulor hosts your favourite VST or AU instruments in a rack, and outputs sound through your professional audio interface (ASIO or CoreAudio compatible). If you don’t have any VST instruments yet you can find some free ones at http://www.kvr-vst.com/. There are quite a few excellent VST instruments available for free.

The resulting MIDI is sent to the instrument rack, where sound is generated. You also have the possibility to record the MIDI data to a file, to import it into DAW software for further editing. Of course, you can use the same software instruments in both Modulor and your DAW software so the result sounds the same.

Interacting with your software instruments’ parameters is possible through AudioCubes’ onboard sensors. Use your hands to control up to four parameters per cube.

Requirements

• AudioCubes and associated software work with computers running Mac OSX 10.4 or later, or Windows XP SP2 or later. Works with Vista, Windows 7, Leopard and Snow Leopard. No drivers necessary.
• One USB 1.1 or later port is required to configure the AudioCubes.
• We recommend to have at least 256MB of RAM in your computer, 600MB free disk space (for sound libraries) and a Pentium 3 or Mac G3 or later processor.
• One or more VST instruments

Number of AudioCubes

• Recommended: 4 or more
• Minimum: 1

Compatibility

• MIDI
• AU/VST Instruments
• ASIO/CoreAudio
• USB 1.1 (HID)

Pricing

Free!

More information

• Download the software from our downloads page (upgrade your AudioCubes to the latest firmware first using the FWUpgrade tool also available there)
• Read the manual for Modulor here

Scenarios in which Modulor can be used

• Live performance
• Music composition

History of Modulor

Modulor is the second in the series of applications we are developing that work with AudioCubes, without requiring you to run other music software simultaneously.

Modulor was developed based on our experiences with the popular LoopShaper application we developed earlier, a great tool for sound and loop design using hand gestures. Read more about LoopShaper at http://www.percussa.com/applications/loopshaper/

We spent over a year developing Modulor. We decided to release it for free for all registered AudioCubes users. Please send us your feedback and feature requests in the forum, so we can keep improving it and making it the ultimate environment to develop ideas for music.