mechanico

mechanico latches your keys into a machine that re-strikes them in lockstep.

Obsessive equal pulses hammered until the mechanism wears out: that is the clockwork loom of Ligeti’s mechanico writing, Continuum’s harder sibling. Each note-on latches the played key into the loom, up to 12 keys; from then on the whole loom is re-struck together every pulse, each strike sounding for half the pulse at the velocity you latched with. Each key dies after repeats strikes. Re-striking a latched key resets its count, velocity, and age. The first pulse lands on the note-on that wakes the empty loom; later keys join at the next pulse, always in lockstep. A 13th key evicts the oldest, silently. And the machine jams: with probability jam per pulse the loom stutters, skipping that pulse in silence and lurching the next one in 50% early, half a pulse instead of a whole one.

Note-ons are consumed into the loom, and note-offs are consumed and ignored: the loom owns every duration, and your release changes nothing. Everything else passes.

The loom is a generator: it runs on its own seeded clock, the same seed and the same playing grinding through the same jams, and cleans up on a scene switch.

Parameters

pulse= takes a duration string like "250ms" or "1.5s", or beats= against the tempo, never both; see Time and tempo.

Parameter	Type	Default	Range
pulse	duration string	"150ms"	at least 50ms
beats	number	none (instead of pulse)	finite, at least 50ms once resolved
repeats	integer	16	1..=64 strikes per key
jam	number	0.1	0..=0.5 probability per pulse
seed	integer	0	any unsigned 64-bit value

Example

miditool.kdl

input "Roland"
output virtual="miditool Out"

mechanico pulse="150ms" repeats=16 jam=0.1 seed=7

Stab a chord and let go: the machine hammers it 16 times at 400 strikes a minute, jamming about every tenth pulse, then falls silent. Add keys while it runs and they join the grid mid-stride.

Try this

Lock the pulse to the tempo and turn the jams up:

tempo 140

mechanico beats=0.25 repeats=32 jam=0.3 seed=2

Sixteenth notes at 140, but nearly a third of the pulses seize up, so the grid keeps skipping and lurching without ever losing its underlying clock. Set jam=0.0 for the pure loom, or follow it with accent-groups to press an additive meter onto the hammering.