Polyknob is an interface that helps the user to easily create and visualize polyrhythms and more complex rhythmic structures as polymeters using as a unique tool geometrical shapes.

Check it out here http://polyknob.surge.sh/

See the tutorial here https://youtu.be/ICfPkmAi8yI

Pushing a button means enter that mode Holding a button means add that feature

• TrackButton - Each Track can accomplish a shape
• ShapeButton - Allows to cange the shape of the track so the pattern that is played
• Rotate - Allows to shift the patter position
• Delete - Delete the current track
• LayerButton - To be added to create polymeters
• EncoderButton - Allows to put trigggers in the selected position when in custom shape mode (by holding the ShapeButton)
• -1 & +1 - To move inside each mode as with the Encoder (the Knob)

Polyrhythms indicate the simultaneous use of two or more conflicting rhythms, that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter.

Definition of Kramer (UCB): “Polyrhythm is the simultaneous existence of different rhythmic groups in different voices”

Cross-Rhythm is a specific form of a polyrhythm. It refers to when the rhythmic conflict found in polyrhythms is the basis of an entire musical piece.

Rhythm in music is characterized by a repeating sequence of stressed and unstressed beats (strong vs. weak; upbeat vs. downbeat) and divided into bars organized by time signature and tempo indications. In music, time signature always occurs at start of a paper sheet, it represents the rhythm of the piece.

Polymeters are rhythms with different time signatures played in step with each other.

At first, the user can choose between two different modes:

In LEARN MODE the user is led into the creation of regular polyrhythms and polymeters with restrictions thought for learning reasons.

• Just some time-signatures considered musically important are took into account
• Just some number of grains are allowed for each time signatures
• Just regular shapes are allowed into the circle

In PLAY MODE the user can freely create different musical constructions.

• The user can choose whatever number of grains he wants

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development, testing and also fun purposes. First of all we need Node and Npm https://www.npmjs.com/get-npm

Lets now install the tone library. Just type this in your terminal app of choice.

Great. That’s all installation for tone.

Our TS lint is very rigid and doesn’t like modules that don’t have types, which sadly is the case of the Tone lib. In order to be able to use tone without our lint freaking out we’ll have to disable noImplicitAny For that go to the tsconfig.json and change “noImplicitAny”: true, to “noImplicitAny”: false,(if it's not there just add it!) I would recommend doing the same for noUnusedLocals as I think it is a bit unnecessary. But feel free to choose.

The aim in having some hardware components is helping you to be faster in the creation/rotation/change of sample mode. The communication with Arduino is done, and the main Knob (encoder) is already settled up and working. All the buttons on the bottom control Panel can be hardware implemented as well, giving a full physical control of the app!

Let's see how to pepare the environment for the hardware :

First of all we need to install the packages that are needed for the communication:

What do we need? - Firmata! - Firmata is a protocol for communicating with microcontrollers from software on a computer (or smartphone/tablet, etc). The protocol can be implemented in firmware on any microcontroller architecture as well as software on any computer software package (see list of client libraries below).

Firmata is based on the midi message format in that commands bytes are 8 bits and data bytes are 7 bits. For example the midi Channel Pressure (Command: 0xD0) message is 2 bytes long, in Firmata the Command 0xD0 is used to enable reporting for a digital port (collection of 8 pins). Both the midi and Firmata versions are 2 bytes long, but the meaning is obviously different. In Firmata, the number of bytes in a message must conform with the corresponding midi message. Midi System Exclusive (Sysex) messages however, can be any length and are therefore used most prominently throughout the Firmata protocol.

Start with setting up our Arduino:

Hardware and software you need:

• Arduino (Genuino) Uno
• Arduino IDE
• Node.js

First connect your Arduino Uno to your computer with a USB cable. Meanwhile, download the Arduino IDE and install it on your computer. You will need the IDE only for the initial setup.

On Arduino IDE, go to Tools > Port and make sure the right board, Arduino Uno, is connected to the right port (tty.usbmodem… for Mac, cu.usbmodem…for Windows).

Johnny-Five communicates with Arduino using the Firmata protocol, so you need to install StandardFirmata:

• On IDE, open File > Examples > Firmata > StandardFirmata.
• Click the upload button (arrow button).
• Wait until the IDE message window says “Done uploading”.
• Close the IDE. You don’t need the IDE anymore unless you want to keep using it for coding.

A simple encoder or simply an encoder in digital electronics is a one-hot to binary converter. That is, if there are 2n input lines, and at most only one of them will ever be high, the binary code of this 'hot' line is produced on the n-bit output lines.

With the codegiven in the repo, the communication is set through socket in your local host. In order to serve the Arduino (encoder) download the repository, set up the communication running node server.js then start the application through npm run start Remember that, even if your running the deployed version (on surge) you need anyway to run the server.js through node. Every command related to +1 and -1 are driven by the encoder. Rotate, change shape and instrument, switch between layers and create your patterns! By pressing the Encoder (on the top as a button) you will be also able to set a trig when defining a custom shape in the shape mode.

In the project directory, you can run:

Runs the app in the development mode.
Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.

The page will reload if you make edits.
You will also see any lint errors in the console.

Launches the test runner in the interactive watch mode.
See the section about running tests for more information.

Builds the app for production to the build folder.
It correctly bundles React in production mode and optimizes the build for the best performance.

The build is minified and the filenames include the hashes.
Your app is ready to be deployed!

See the section about deployment for more information.

Note: this is a one-way operation. Once you eject, you can’t go back!

If you aren’t satisfied with the build tool and configuration choices, you can eject at any time. This command will remove the single build dependency from your project.

Instead, it will copy all the configuration files and the transitive dependencies (Webpack, Babel, ESLint, etc) right into your project so you have full control over them. All of the commands except eject will still work, but they will point to the copied scripts so you can tweak them. At this point you’re on your own.

You don’t have to ever use eject. The curated feature set is suitable for small and middle deployments, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to use this feature. However we understand that this tool wouldn’t be useful if you couldn’t customize it when you are ready for it.

• Tone.js - Tone.js is a framework for creating interactive music in the browser. It provides advanced scheduling capabilities, synths and effects, and intuitive musical abstractions built on top of the Web Audio API.
• Johnny-Five - JavaScript can be used to control hordes of small robots, creative maker projects, and IoT devices. With the Node.js ecosystem at hand, hardware prototyping gets fun, intuitive and fast.
• Express.js - Express.js, or simply Express, is a web application framework for Node.js, released as free and open-source software under the MIT License. It is designed for building web applications and APIs. It has been called the de facto standard server framework for Node.js.
• Socket.io - Socket.IO enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It consists of a Node.js server and Javascript client library for the browser (or a Node.js client)
• React - React (also known as React.js or ReactJS) is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies
• Node.js - Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside of a browser. Node.js lets developers use JavaScript to write command line tools and for server-side scripting—running scripts server-side to produce dynamic web page content before the page is sent to the user's web browser.