Break — Ectocore-style break mangling for the Alchemy Lab
Firmware for the Hermetic Modular Alchemy Lab V2. It plays sliced breaks from an SD card prepared on ectocore.rocks (16 banks × 16 samples, with slices, kick/snare marks and a grimoire) and mangles them through Smack's seeded per-slice glitch engine.
It is inspired by the infinitedigits Ectocore and reads its card format.
It contains none of its code: schollz/_core is GPL-3.0, and this is a
clean-room implementation from a format description
(docs/ectocore-sd-format.md). MIT.
Panel
PLAY SHIFT (hold B3)
[P1 BREAK] B1 [P2 AMEN] [VOLUME] [SEED]
[P3 SAMPLE] B2 [P4 RANDOM] [BANK] [PITCH RANGE]
[P5 GRIMOIRE]B3 [P6 DJ FILT] [CLOCK RATIO] [TEMPO]
| Control | Does |
|---|---|
| BREAK | how many slices carry an effect (squared curve) |
| AMEN | CCW: straight · middle: loop a random sequence of 1–32 slices · full CW: random 3-slice phrases |
| AMEN RANDOM | centre: off · left: jump, and carry on from there · right: jump, then snap back to the grid |
| SAMPLE / BANK | pick among the samples / banks actually on the card |
| GRIMOIRE | rune 1–7: which effects BREAK can use (from the card's settings/grimoire, else built-ins) |
| DJ FILTER | LP left, HP right, open at centre |
| VOLUME | 100 % at noon, then soft saturation |
| CLOCK RATIO | what a J1 pulse is worth: /2 half note, =1 quarter, x2 eighth (2 ppqn, default) |
| B1 | tap: re-roll · hold: stop / play |
| B2 | tap: tap tempo · hold: punch (every slice retriggers) |
| Settings (B2+B3) | P1 brightness · P2 Trig Out (kick / snare / transient / random) · P3-P4 presets · P5 Evolve (fresh pattern each pass) · P6 Tempo: pitch follows tempo, or keep pitch · page 2 = SD firmware picker |
Jacks: J1 clock in · J2 reset · J3 AMEN cv · J4 BREAK cv · J5 SAMPLE cv · J6 AMEN RANDOM cv · J7 clock out (eighths) · J8 trig out · J9/J10 audio out.
LEDs: B1 green playing · amber loading · red no card / load failed · grey stopped · white punching. B2 blue = locked to J1 · grey free-running (white flash per beat) · red = CPU > 80 %.
The card
Export from ectocore.rocks and copy the folder's contents (or the folder
itself) to a FAT32 card: bank1/0.0.wav + bank1/0.0.wav.info, … and
settings/grimoire/runeN/effectE-on.
Or skip ectocore.rocks: python3 tools/make_card.py <breaks folder> <card>
turns any wav / aif / mp3 / flac breaks into the same layout (tempo from the
name like amen 136bpm.wav, else from the length; eighth-note slices; kicks
and snares guessed for Trig Out). Needs ffmpeg. tools/make_test_card.py <dir>
writes a small synthetic card.
Build, test, flash
make libdaisy # once
make # build/break_alchemy.bin
make test # native: card reader, Amen/runes, engine with a loaded break
make program-live # flash over HostLink
Emulator (alchemy-lab, branch emu-custom): see emu.mk.
make test-real runs emu-tests-real/*.emu against your own card
(~/Music/Break Card, or BREAK_REAL_CARD=…); skipped when there is none.
make -C <alchemy-lab>/emu test-custom FW_DIR=$PWD runs emu-tests/*.emu against emu-card/.
Home preset slot 4.