vimsynth/modules/topo

modules/sequencing/TOPO

TOPO

A drum machine you STEER, not program. Four grooves sit at the corners of an x/y map — straight rock, breakbeat, house, broken — and the knobs put you between them, blended. Each instrument has a density that fills the beat in from skeletal to frantic, revealing the ghost notes the pattern already implies rather than adding random ones. Clock it; take the kick, snare and hat triggers into three drum voices (a struck RESON, a noise burst, a pitched-down sine). chaos dusts it with life.

The TOPO card as vimsynth draws it: its title bar, 6 knobs, 5 inputs down the left edge and 3 outputs down the right
TOPO on an empty rack — 32×21 cells, knobs at their defaults. Press a in the app and pick TOPO to get this card.

inputs

Down the left edge of the card, top to bottom.

clktrigger
Advances one step. Sixteen steps to the bar, so a sixteenth-note clock plays it at speed.
resettrigger
Back to the top of the bar (the downbeat).
xcv
Added to the x knob — slides across the map, straight toward broken. Automate it to make the beat evolve.
ycv
Added to the y knob — rock toward house.
fillcv
Added to every instrument's density at once — one cable to open the whole beat up, e.g. from an envelope on the drop.

outputs

Down the right edge, in the same order.

kicktrigger
The kick drum's trigger. Into an envelope on a pitched-down sine, or a struck RESON.
snaretrigger
The snare's trigger. A noise burst through a fast envelope, or a bright RESON.
hattrigger
The hat's trigger. Filtered noise, short.

knobs

Left to right across the face — the dials in the picture.

x0 … 1= 0
Where on the map, left to right: straight beats toward broken, syncopated ones.
y0 … 1= 0
Where on the map, front to back: rock toward house.
kick0 … 1= 0.5
Kick density — how full the kick drum's part is. Skeletal at 0, a flood at 1.
snare0 … 1= 0.5
Snare density.
hat0 … 1= 0.5
Hat density.
chaos0 … 1= 0
Randomness. 0 plays the map exactly and every bar is the same; turn it up and the beat gains and drops the odd hit, dusted with life.

more

The full reference — every parameter curve, the patching notes and the worked examples — lives in the manual: docs.vimsynth.com/modules/topo. In the app itself, :help TOPO opens the same page without leaving the rack.