WORKSHOP COMPUTER VERSIONLABORATORY 0

ASTERISK

Disconnected.
NO CLOCK
—

Click to adjust. Drag to swap sounds; rhythms stay.

CONTROLS

  1. Install Asterisk 1.2 firmware for Scale and Auto Pan. Power the Workshop Computer normally and connect its front USB-C port with a data cable.
  2. Open this page in Chrome or Edge. Press Connect and allow MIDI and SysEx access.
  3. Set an internal tempo, mute voices with M, or isolate one or more voices with S. Mute wins over Solo.
  4. Click a voice to open its Level, Pan and Delay Send controls. Drag its name or symbol onto another voice to exchange their sounds. Their rhythms stay in place.
  5. Press the center disc for a new scene. Manual tempo, Delay Time, Auto Pan, Mute and Solo stay as set. Auto Tempo restores each scene’s generated tempo.

Level adjusts the voice and its input to the echo. Delay Send sets the echo balance for each voice. Delay Time is shared: Sync follows the active clock; Free uses milliseconds. T means triplet, D means dotted. MAX marks a clock division longer than the 1.024-second buffer. Time changes crossfade; existing tails remain.

External CV or USB MIDI clock takes priority over the tempo field. Existing echo tails can linger after muting. Closing this page leaves the current controls on the hardware; power cycling clears them.

Scale shows the current scene’s scale. Changing it keeps the root note, rhythms and sounds, and applies to new hits on the next clock step. Full randomization picks a new scale; single-voice randomization keeps it. Save and Recall include the scale choice.

Preview is a silent interface demo. Filter, Decay and Heat are controlled on the hardware.

Pan positions the dry voice. Use the slider to move between left, center and right. Manual Pan holds a fixed position until that voice is rerolled. Generated pan positions can include movement. Auto Pan moves the shared echo between left and right, independently of the dry voices. It follows Delay Time, with a minimum of 100 ms per crossing. Switching is smoothed; feedback and delay length stay unchanged. Turn it off to center the echo. This moves the combined return rather than routing individual repeats through separate delay channels.

Each small star generates a new sound, rhythm, Level, Pan and Send for that voice, using the same generation rules as the center star. The other voices and global settings stay as set. All voices stay on the shared clock; their loop lengths can differ.

SAVE downloads the current patch to your computer. RECALL loads a saved file on the next clock step. Patches include all six voices, rhythms, generated key and effects, tempo, mute, solo, per-voice level, pan and send, delay time and Auto Pan. Hardware knobs and CV remain live; playback position and ringing tails are not saved. Requires Asterisk 1.2 firmware. Save and Recall use files on your computer; the Program Card is not written during playback.

Connection and audio diagnostics

Connect hardware to read its counters.

If audio underruns increase while playing, note the scene and operation and report them with your listening test.

SELECT PORTS