Talea

Key Ideas

The selected track

The row of small numbered buttons above the pads selects a track. The knobs always show the selected track's values: when you change track, they jump to that track's settings. CV and randomness never move a knob. Instead an orange modulation ring around the knob shows where the value is playing right now, and the display's info line shows stored>live, for example VEL 64>87.

Track groups

Ctrl+click track buttons to group them, or Shift+click to group a range from the selected track. A knob turn then moves every grouped track by the same amount, each kept within its range. Grouped tracks light dim red and the header reads GROUP. A plain click selects one track again. The ALL TRACKS button groups every track.

The context display

The large display has a tab for each page: TRACK, STEP, CYCLE, KEYS, SCALE, PHRASE, STYLE, REPEAT, GROOVE, RANDOM, PATTERN, SONG and SETUP. Click a tab to open a page and click the options on it to change them. Turning a knob opens the page that belongs to it (Range opens PHRASE, Voicing opens STYLE and so on). You can turn that off with Display follows knobs in the context menu. The line along the bottom of the display (the info line) describes what you are looking at or about to do.

Tooltips and undo

Hover over any knob, button, jack, light, page tab or option for a short description. Every edit, including pad clicks, display options, copy, paste and clear, is one step in Rack's undo history (Ctrl+Z). Selections, the pad mode and the displayed page aren't edits, so they aren't recorded.

Modifier clicks

Every action is a single click. Ctrl+click and Shift+click select several things at once, and right-click opens menus and resets values.

Quick Start

1. Add Talea and, directly to its right, Talea OUT. The OUT's green link light comes on when they touch.
2. Patch OUT's track 1 Pitch, Gate and Vel into a polyphonic voice: an oscillator's V/Oct, an envelope's gate and a VCA. Make sure the whole voice is polyphonic (see Tips).
3. Press PLAY. Track 1 is selected and silent, because a new track has no pulses.
4. Turn PULSES up: the hits spread out over the 16 steps. Turn ROTATE to shift them.
5. Open the KEYS page and click a few keys to build a chord (the track's note pool). Turn VOICING and pick a STYLE to move the chord around, or set PLAY to MONO on the STYLE page to arpeggiate it.
6. Pick a scale on the SCALE page, then turn RANGE to let the notes climb along a phrase.
7. Select track 2 and repeat with different STEPS and DIVISION. Uneven step counts drift against each other and make long, evolving patterns.

For a step sequence instead, open the SETUP page and set MODE to SEQ. Click a pad to select a step and add its notes on the KEYS page (see SEQ mode).

Transport & Clock

Perform Buttons

The Knobs

Shape

Repeats

Groove

Tonal

Random

Right-click a knob for Rack's usual menu (type a value, reset). With COPY, PASTE or CLEAR armed, clicking a knob copies, pastes or resets that one parameter instead of turning it.

Pads & Pad Modes

Other pad-area buttons

Step Locks & Step Pools

In STEP pad mode, Ctrl+click pads to select steps (they light blue and the display shows a LOCK tag). While steps are selected, the knobs show the first selected step's value, and turning a knob writes that value as a lock on every selected step. These can be locked: Repeats, Ramp, Time, Pace, Velocity, Probability, Sustain, Accent, Timing, Delay, Pitch, Voicing and Range. Steps, Pulses, Rotate, Division and Length set the loop, so they can't be locked and their knobs dim.

A locked step plays its lock on its pulse and its repeats; randomness still applies on top. Steps with locks show light blue. The STEP page shows a lane for each locked parameter (up to 4): click or drag in a lane to set values across steps, right-click to remove a lock.

With steps selected, the KEYS page edits a step pool: the selected steps get their own chord or note instead of the track's pool (Pitch, Voicing, Style and Range still apply). TRACK POOL on the KEYS page removes it again.

Outside CYC EDIT, locks belong to the track and every cycle plays them. In CYC EDIT they go to the edited cycle only. Click STEP again, change track or leave STEP mode to end the selection. Copy, paste and clear work on step pads too.

Cycles

A track can have up to 8 cycles. Each time the track finishes a loop (its Length, or one pass of its Steps), it moves on to its next cycle. A cycle starts out identical to the track. Give it changes of its own and the track plays a different variation each time round, for example a fill on every fourth bar.

• Set the number of cycles on the CYCLE page (COUNT), or click past the last cycle in CYCLE pad mode.
• Select a cycle and turn on CYC EDIT. Only that cycle plays, and everything you change goes to it: knobs, step on/off edits, locks, scale and pool, phrase, mode and sequence.
• With CYC EDIT off, turning a knob moves the track and every cycle's own value together, so the variations keep their differences.
• On the STEP and TRACK pages, each cycle has a lane showing how it plays. On the pads, dim red marks a step the playing cycle adds and dark orange a step it drops.
• CLEAR on the CYCLE page removes a cycle's own changes: all of them, or one item (step edits, locks, scale, sequence, mode, a parameter or a random amount).
• A muted cycle keeps the track silent while it plays.

The Display Pages

Scales: Chromatic, Major, Natural Minor, Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Locrian, Major Pentatonic, Minor Pentatonic, Blues, Major Blues, Whole Tone, Diminished (H-W), Diminished (W-H), Phrygian Dominant, Hungarian Minor, Double Harmonic, Japanese (In), Hirajoshi, Arabic, and User. Scale, root and pool are per track, and a cycle can have its own.

SEQ Mode & Recording

Set MODE to SEQ on the SETUP page (or use the context menu). Each step holds a chord of up to 8 notes (or nothing: a rest), its own velocity, and a gate length in steps. A gate longer than one step ties the note over the following steps until it ends or the next step with notes cuts it. Steps, Division and Length still set the loop, so cycles, randomness and patterns work as usual. When you switch an empty track to SEQ, it is filled from the hits that were playing, so the rhythm carries over.

Editing steps

• Click a pad (STEP mode) to select that step. It lights green and the KEYS page shows its notes.
• On the KEYS page, click keys to add or remove notes from the selected step's chord. REST removes all its notes.
• Right-click a pad to make that step a rest.
• Ctrl+click pads to select several steps for locks (blue). KEYS then edits all of them together.
• The STEP page shows N.VEL (velocity) and GATE lanes: click or drag to set, right-click for the default.
• Copy, paste and clear on a step pad include its notes; on a track button, its whole sequence.

What applies in SEQ mode

Notes play as entered, plus Pitch and Transpose, kept in the scale. Velocity locks, randomness, IN-expander CV, Accent, Ramp, Probability, Repeats, Timing, Delay and Sustain (which shapes the last step of each gate) still apply. Pulses, Rotate, Harmony, Voicing and Range have no effect: their knobs dim and don't turn, and the PHRASE and STYLE pages dim. The Velocity knob sets the velocity of new notes.

Scales in SEQ mode

With any scale other than Chromatic, the track stays in the scale. Wherever a note outside it would appear, it moves to the nearest scale note, and when two are equally near it goes up. In a seven-note scale like Major, every note outside the scale is a tie, so it always goes up. In scales with wider gaps the nearer note wins: in C major pentatonic, F becomes E.

• On the KEYS page, keys outside the scale are dimmed and can't be added. A note already in the chord can still be removed.
• Notes from NOTE IN are moved into the scale before they sound and before they're recorded, so what's recorded is what you heard.
• After Pitch and Transpose, the notes are moved into the scale again.
• Changing the scale, root or a User note moves the stored notes onto the new scale. Notes that land on the same note merge. Switching back doesn't restore them, but the change is one undo step: Ctrl+Z brings them back. Changing the root moves notes into the new key; it doesn't transpose them (use Pitch or Transpose for that).

Recording

Patch a keyboard into NOTE IN: polyphonic V/Oct, Gate and (optionally) Velocity, for example from VCV MIDI>CV with its polyphony set to 8. Select a SEQ-mode track and press REC. Notes go into the selected track's sequence, or the edited cycle's in CYC EDIT.

• Playing: live recording (REC light solid). Each note goes to the nearest step, and its length is rounded to whole steps. Keys played together form a chord.
• Stopped: step recording (REC light blinking). Each chord you play goes to the cursor step (the blinking red pad), and when you let go of all keys the cursor moves to the next step. Click a pad to move the cursor.
• OVD (overdub): with it off (the default), notes played on a step that already has notes replace them. With it on, they're added to the step's chord.
• One recording, from REC on to REC off, is one undo step.
• Unpatched VEL: notes take the Velocity knob's value.

Monitoring

In SEQ mode, the keys you hold at NOTE IN always sound on the selected track's outputs (main jacks, OUT expander and MIDI), with REC on or off. While you hold keys they take over the track's outputs from its sequence. Adding keys to a held chord doesn't retrigger the gate.

Patterns, Temp & Song

Patterns

Talea holds 16 patterns. A pattern is the whole state of the 16 tracks. Switch with the pads in PATTERN mode, the PATTERN page or the IN expander's Pattern input. A switch waits for the SWITCH timing (now, beat, bar or end of pattern; when stopped it is immediate), restarts every track from step 1 and ends Temp. Shift+click pattern pads to build a chain: each time a pattern ends, the next one in the chain starts, round and round. The module's patterns are saved with the patch, and as a module preset through Rack's Preset menu.

Temp

Turn on TEMP to experiment: every edit is temporary until you decide. Click TEMP again to throw the changes away, or Ctrl+click it to keep them. On the PATTERN page, TEMP TO saves the current state into another slot.

Song mode

The SONG page arranges patterns into a song of up to 64 entries, each playing one pattern for a number of bars (1–999). Click + to add the playing pattern, click an entry to select it, and use the mouse wheel over an entry to change its bars. The rows edit the selected entry: PATTERN, BARS (or PAT = the pattern's own length) and EDIT (add, insert, delete, clear song). With the SONG page open in PATTERN pad mode, clicking a pattern pad adds that pattern to the song.

• SONG ON starts song mode. Each entry plays its pattern for its bars, then the next entry starts on the bar line.
• LOOP returns to the first entry at the end. Without it the sequencer stops.
• FOLLOW keeps the playing entry in view.
• Switching patterns by hand takes over from the song. SONG ON blinks, and clicking it resumes the song where it left off, on the next bar line.

Randomness

Each track has a random sequence of 16 values per parameter. To randomise a parameter, turn on RND ASSIGN and turn its knob: the amount is bipolar, so clockwise pushes the value up (by up to the amount times the parameter's range) and counter-clockwise pushes it down. Steps, Division and Length can't be randomised, because they set the loop length.

• Variance sets how often values are re-rolled; at 0 the same 16 values repeat forever, so random can be a fixed, repeatable variation.
• Rate sets how fast values advance. On the RANDOM page, click a parameter's C / R to make it change once per cycle loop instead.
• REGEN rolls new values (also by trigger at the IN expander's REGEN). PHASE shifts the sequence. LOCK freezes the values as they are now. PROB shifts which notes Probability skips. SLEW glides between values.
• Random values never move the knobs; the orange modulation ring shows them.

CC Tracks

Set TYPE to CC on the SETUP page and the track plays values instead of notes, for modulating anything. The rhythm works as usual; each pulse sends a value:

• Value = Velocity (0–127), with locks, randomness, CV, Accent and Ramp.
• Glide = Sustain: 0 jumps to the new value, higher settings glide to it (100 % = across the whole gap).
• The track's Pitch output carries the value as 0–10 V. MIDI sends it as Control Change on the track's channel, using the number set with CC x10 and CC x1 (0–119, default 1 = mod wheel).
• The pitch settings and the KEYS, SCALE, PHRASE and STYLE pages don't apply.

MIDI Out

Choose a device under MIDI in the right-click menu. Each track sends on its own channel (SETUP page MIDI CH; track n defaults to channel n, and OFF sends nothing). MIDI follows the gate outputs exactly: full chords, transposition and velocity, and muted tracks send nothing. Stop, Reset and pattern switches end sounding notes, and Kill stuck notes also sends All Notes Off on every channel.

CLOCK on the SETUP page sends MIDI clock (24 PPQN) with Start, Continue and Stop.

Outputs

To use the main outputs one track at a time, split them with a polyphonic splitter (for example VCV Split).

IN & OUT Expanders

Talea IN (left of Talea)

Talea OUT (right of Talea)

Talea OUT

Place it directly to the right of Talea (the green link light shows it's connected). It has a Pitch, Gate and Vel jack for each of the 16 tracks, carrying full chords, one voice per channel.

• Each output has a fixed number of channels: Polyphony (channels) in the right-click menu, 1–8, default 8. The count never changes while playing, so polyphonic envelopes and VCAs downstream keep every voice.
• Each voice has its own gate, and keeps its pitch and velocity after its gate falls, so release tails sound on the right note. Unused voices stay low.
• A chord puts note 1 on channel 1, note 2 on channel 2 and so on. Keys played live (SEQ monitoring) keep their channel while held, like VCV MIDI>CV.
• MONO arpeggios use channel 1, as do CC tracks (the value, 0–10 V).
• Each track's light: dim orange = idle, white = gate, blue-grey = muted.

Talea IN

Place it directly to the left of Talea. All of its CV inputs are polyphonic, channel n = track n; a mono cable feeds every track.

• CV → PARAMETER: a CV input with an attenuverter for each knob parameter (Pulses, Rotate, Repeats, Ramp, Time, Pace, Velocity, Probability, Sustain, Accent, Timing, Delay, Pitch, Voicing, Range). ±5 V × the attenuverter covers the parameter's full range, added on top of the knob, locks and randomness.
• XPOSE (transpose): V/Oct, transposes the notes (kept in the scale).
• PHRASE: drives the phrase of tracks whose Phrase is set to CV (−5 to +5 V = bottom to top).
• PATTERN: 0–10 V selects pattern 1–16.
• TEMP: Temp is on while the gate is high.
• MUTES: high = muted; a patched track follows its gate at each change. APPLY: a trigger applies staged mutes.
• REGEN: a trigger rolls new random values for the track.

Context Menu

Right-click Talea's panel for:

• Clock in / out PPQN and Run input (gate or trigger).
• Mute timing and behaviour (finish or cut sounding notes).
• Display follows knobs.
• MIDI: output driver and device.
• Kill stuck notes: all gates low and All Notes Off on MIDI.
• The selected track's sequencer mode (EUCLID / SEQ).

Several buttons have menus of their own: right-click MUTE, PATTERN, TEMP or the Harmony knob.

Tips & Troubleshooting

• Only one note of a chord sounds. The whole voice must be polyphonic: oscillator, envelope, filter and VCA. A mono VCA (or mixer) in the chain plays channel 1 only. Also check that you're using the OUT expander, since the main PITCH jack carries one note per track.
• Notes cut off early. Use the OUT expander with its Polyphony set to the number of voices your synth runs. The channel count stays fixed so releases finish.
• Nothing plays on a new track. A new track has 0 pulses: turn up Pulses, or switch it to SEQ mode and enter notes.
• A knob won't turn. It's dimmed because it has no effect right now: in SEQ mode (Pulses, Rotate, Harmony, Voicing, Range), with steps selected (Steps, Pulses, Rotate, Division, Length can't be locked), or under Rnd Assign (Steps, Division, Length).
• Uneven MIDI timing. Keep an Audio module with a device selected in the patch. If another program holds an exclusive ASIO driver, don't use the same driver in Rack: use WASAPI or another device.
• Stuck notes: right-click Talea → Kill stuck notes.
• Long, evolving patterns: give tracks different Steps or Lengths (e.g. 16, 13 and 7 steps). They drift against each other and only line up again after a long time.