Follow instrument · Raspberry Pi 4 + 7" touchscreen

RING

A round touch instrument that listens to the music coming in, locks its clock to the beat, and lets you play along on top.

Runs on a Linux desktop today. The Raspberry Pi image builds and is being tested on the device now. Free software, GPL-3.0.

Try it on your computer Source on GitHub The design sheet

RING's round screen going through ten of its pages: pads, the beat follower, chords, drums, effects, modulation, the amp, the mixer, perform and key — Ten of its pages, drawn by RING itself (800 × 480, the size of the panel)

What it does

Plug a drum machine, a band or a record into it. RING hears the tempo and where the bar starts, and what you play on the screen lands in time. Every page is a ring: tap to play, drag along a ring to strum or set an amount, turn the middle to transpose.

Follows the beat

It listens to the input, finds the tempo, the beat and the downbeat, and locks to them. Tap tempo and nudge when you want to lead.

Pads and chords in the key

Twelve scale pads around the middle, the chords of the key on a strum ring. HEAR KEY tells you the key of what's coming in.

Drums, phrases, tape

Twelve synthesized drums with eight patterns, four melody phrases, four loop layers that stay on the bar.

Effects and an amp

Delay and gate on the clock, reverb, drive, an amp with six voicings and a tuner. Repeat, stutter, tape stop and kills to play live.

Plays with other gear

MIDI in and out (notes, clock, start and stop), and Ableton Link for tempo and phase over the network.

Keeps your work

Twelve project slots, twelve scenes, undo, autosave, and what comes out bounced to WAV.

Screens

The FOLLOW page: 185.0 BPM, locked, confidence 97 percent, the onsets drawn around the ring — FOLLOW · the listener, locked at 185

The PADS page: twelve pads of A minor pentatonic around a hub showing 185 and FOLLOWING — PADS · twelve pads in the key

The CHORDS page: the chords of A minor with sevenths around the hub, the harp voice on — CHORDS · strum the chords of the key

The DRUMS page: twelve drums around the hub, pattern 1, pitch on the right disc — DRUMS · twelve drums, eight patterns

The TAPE page: four loop layers as nested rings — TAPE · four loops on the bar

The FX page: twelve effect amounts around the hub, delay at 30 percent — FX · twelve amounts on one ring

The MOD page: modulation sources on the inner ring, targets on the outer ring — MOD · tap a source, then a target

The AMP page: six amp voicings around the hub, CRUNCH selected, a tuner on the left — AMP · six voicings and a tuner

Drawn first

Every screen was drawn before it was built, in one language. The hub is the clock and the key, a ring of twelve around it is whatever you play, the outer ring is time, and the two discs are the chain: input on the left, output on the right.

The design sheet has every screen with notes. The mockup is the first sketch that made sound, in a browser.

The anatomy panel of the design sheet: the hub, the pad ring, the outer ring, the input and output discs and the pages, labelled — The anatomy panel of the design sheet

Get one

What you need

RING is software; there is nothing to order. It runs on parts you can buy:

a Raspberry Pi 4 and its power supply
the official Raspberry Pi 7-inch touchscreen (800 × 480)
a USB audio interface with an input, such as TWOFOLD
a microSD card of 8 GB or more

TWOFOLD, the matching sound card

ESP32-S3 · USB audio · made in Haifa

An audio interface by the same maker. The Pi image picks it up by itself. Write and ask about price and shipping.

Email WhatsApp TWOFOLD

Build it yourself

Everything is open: the code, the script that makes the Pi image, the design sheets.

Read the guide

Try it

On a Linux computer first: the same instrument in a window, with the mouse as one finger.

sudo apt install build-essential libsdl2-dev libasound2-dev
git clone https://github.com/willbearfruits/ring
cd ring
make run

Play something into your audio input and watch FOLLOW lock. F1..F8 jump between pages, Esc quits.

Then the Pi: make image builds a Raspberry Pi OS image with RING in it (Docker, about half an hour the first time). Write it to the card with Raspberry Pi Imager, connect the touchscreen and the sound card, and it starts straight into RING. A ready image will go on the Releases page once it has been played on a Pi. The Pi notes have the rest.

Status

Works on a Linux desktop: it builds, runs and passes its checks.
The Pi image builds.
On the Pi with the touchscreen it is being tested now; until that's done, treat the Pi side as untested.