i2c control and voice assignment
polyearthsea is able to directly control i2c devices (just friends, telexo, er-301). it will require a powered i2c board or txb module. it will NOT require a teletype, but you can have a teletype connected to the same bus, just try not to use i2c on both at the same time (although it might work).
3rd column from the left selects voices for the current pattern. in this version you don't select voices for live playing anymore, it will always use the voices assigned to the current pattern. the 4th column from the left allows you to mute voices.
to use i2c control open voices page (press bottom left corner button, press again to exit). by default i2c is disabled (in this mode earthsea will respond to teletype ops). press 6th button from the top in the rightmost column to enable it.
you will also need to assign some voices to an i2c device. by default voices are only assigned to the module's own cv/gate outputs (whichever are available on your module). make sure that "note" parameter is selected (in the 6th column from the left), and select which voice you want to map in the next column. the area on the right is where you select which outputs will be mapped to that voice. there is a separate column for each device - module / er-301 / just friends / txo osc / txo cv/gate. you can map a single voice to any combination of outputs on any combination of devices. this can be useful for creating chords as you can set transposition for each output (see output parameters and modulation for details).
for txo there are 2 columns because you can use it either as a sound source or a cv/gate source. you can also use just friends as either a sound source or an envelope generator - switch this with "jf mode" button.
in addition to note you can also map other voice parameters - key/x/y. this can be useful for modulating other parameters, such as filter cutoff. you can assign them to cv outputs or additional er-301 cvs or txo cv outputs. x and y will modulate parameters based on x and y coordinates, and key is the key number which increases from left to right and from bottom to top.
there are 2 more parameters - pattern start 1 (for patterns 1-8) and pattern start 2 (patterns 9-16). mapping these will generate a trigger at the assigned outputs when the mapped pattern starts - this could also be great with something like sample&hold modules to change modulation on every parameter.
if you run it on a module that has knobs (like earthsea), the knobs will be automatically mapped to mod buses starting with the first one - you should avoid assigning anything else to these mod buses since the values will get overwritten if you move knobs.
this is quite a lot to remember! fear not - there is a reference built into the page itself. use one of the 2 help buttons (bottom row, 2nd buttom from the left and the rightmost button - they blink so easy to find). it will show you the parameter currently selected and which column is for which device.
you can also modulate parameters internally - this is what the 6th column is for. there are 8 mod buses which you can use to modulate output parameters such as octave or volume. see output parameters and modulation for more details.
video coming soon