Star-seedquencer

Star-seedquencer is a deterministic, multi-track MIDI step seeded sequencer that derives its musical seeds from the real positions of naked-eye-visible stars in the sky above the instrument's physical location.

It runs headlessly on a Pi, and receives per-track configuration over a serial connection from a bank of 8 external controllers - each contains a small screen and controls to use to define the relevant parameters per track. The device is housed in a small eurorack case with an external display showing the live radial sky map, defined parameters, and track sequences.

Each track's seed is derived from a wedge of the visible-star dome, described by a centre compass bearing, an angular width, and a minimum brightness threshold. As Earth rotates, the visible stars sweep across the sky and each track's slice naturally accumulates a slowly-changing population of qualifying stars which are used as seed data for sequencer tracks of various types (instruments, drums, tuned-drums & drones).

This gives a continuously varying source of seed data to feed into the sequencer which is dependent on the location of the device in time and space. The "Sky time" that the star map is rendered using can be locked in local time, or multipliers can be applied to accelerate, reverse or freeze the passing of time, allowing musical time-travel within the domain of the stars (or something like that). The device will be linked to a computer which will convert the midi signals to (hopefully musical) audio.