Manual

Molecular build 75 for the Sonicake Pocket Master.

The controls

The Pocket Master has an encoder (turn and press) and two side buttons. A hold means 0.8 seconds. The side buttons act when they are let go, or once held for 0.8 seconds.

Control	On the molecule	In the menu
Encoder, turn	Volume, shown large	The next item, slot or value
Encoder, press	A new molecule	Does the item; in PATCHES, loads the slot
Encoder, hold	Opens the menu	Back to the molecule; in PATCHES, saves to the slot
Left button	Rewires the molecule	In PATCHES or SETTINGS: back
Left button, hold	New LFOs for the generator and every atom	-
Right button	New values for every atom	In PATCHES or SETTINGS: back
Right button, hold	MOTION on or off	-
Both side buttons, 3 s	The pedal's update mode, for an install (see Update mode)

Powering on and off

Hold the encoder to switch the pedal on. The screen asks POWER ON? with NO and YES, NO first: turn to YES and press. NO, or no answer for 10 seconds, switches it off again. Letting go of the hold that switched it on answers nothing.

To switch off, open the menu, choose POWER and answer YES to POWER OFF?. The sound fades, the screen says OFF, and the pedal switches off. Connected to a computer by USB the pedal stays powered, its screen dark and silent; hold the encoder to start it again.

POWER ON? with NO chosen — POWER ON?, NO first.

POWER OFF? with NO chosen — POWER OFF?, from the menu.

The molecule

Every sound is a molecule, drawn as a chemist draws one: the generator, a large yellow disc marked FM, bonded to one to five atoms, each an effect, in the colour of its family. Each atom takes the sound of the atom it is bonded to on the generator's side. The outermost atoms are heard, each where it stands across the screen, from left to right in the stereo field. Half of what you hear is the generator itself, in the middle; the other half is the atoms.

A ring lights round each disc while it sounds, and small dots travel along the bonds, larger when louder. A new molecule shows its generator's family for a moment.

Encoder press: a whole new molecule, generator and atoms, through a short fade.
Left button: the same atoms, with their values and LFOs, bonded anew (REWIRE). Some molecules can be bonded only one way, and say NO REWIRE. The sound crossfades to the new bonds.
Right button: every atom's values drawn anew (FX). The kinds and the bonds stay. With FX MORPH set (SETTINGS), the values glide to the new ones over that many seconds instead of changing at once.
Left button held: new LFOs for the generator's four macros and for one value of each atom (LFO).

A new molecule shows its family — A new molecule names its family.

The volume, shown large — Turning: the volume.

The generator

Two engines: six-operator FM and physical models. Each new molecule draws one of 66 families, a chord to play it on, and, for FM, four LFOs on its macros. A new molecule is never of the family of the last three, and often of another kind, so successive sounds contrast.

Ambient: Tonitor's families, drawn on its ambient path: METAL, DRONE, ITERATIF, SPECTRE, ABYSS, CHOIR, BOWED, HOLLOW, BLOOM, TIDE, WIND, PLUCK, MALLET, WARP, SHAPER, LADDER, REVERSE, CREEP, CLANG.
Harsh: Tonitor's harsher families, on its open path: BRUIT, FRICTION, SHARDS, STATIC, GLITCH.
Held: Recipes after Norilsk's: HUM (a machine room), SWARM (a buzzing mass), ORGAN (an organ in a ruin), MODES (metal in the wind), STEAM (a hissing pipe), SCRAPE, CORONA (a high shimmer), ASH (a dark drone under a dusty crackle).
Struck: Metal struck, never a drum, on clocks that never quite repeat: ANVIL, STAMP, RIVET and SHEET scatter their strikes in clusters and pauses; GEARS, PISTON, RATCHET and FORGE run like machines whose pace wanders, some with a hiss of steam between strikes.
From the FM literature: TRUAX (one set of partials, its energy moving: Truax's normal forms), HAMMER (Schottstaedt's piano), TAM (tam-tams and membranes), CHIME (Chowning's tubular bell, with its hum below the note), FORMANT (the chord fused in fixed resonances), GROWL (feedback through a chain of operators), GLOW (brightening as it dies), ALLURE (the timbre pulsing at 3 to 12 Hz).
Physical models: HARP (a plucked string), WIRE (a stiff struck wire, its partials stretched), SNARE (Karplus-Strong's drum), PIPE (a struck stopped pipe), SITAR (a buzzing bridge), GONG (stiff, its pitch falling as it dies), BOWL (banded waveguides: bars, glass, a Tibetan bowl), BAR (marimba, vibraphone, agogo, wood), BELL, SKIN (a membrane). Struck on the same clocks, or held by a dust of small strikes.

The atoms

Each atom is one effect, its colour its family: cyan for filters and formants, orange for drive and wave shaping, pink for frequency shifting and cross-modulation, green for resonators, violet for time and texture, pale blue for space. Every atom has four values, drawn within bounds where it is always heard.

FMFMThe generator: six-operator FM, the root of every molecule. FLFILTERA driven state-variable filter: low-pass, band-pass, high-pass or notch, resonant to the edge of screaming, never piercing. FOFOLDA wavefolder, with a second fold and a tone control. MUMULAWRate and bit reduction, the filter open enough to alias, driven into it. SHSHIFTA frequency shifter: every partial moved by the same number of hertz, up or down, so harmonic sounds turn inharmonic. MOMODALThree tuned resonators, spread inharmonically, ringing up to Q 325. STSTRINGThree Karplus-Strong strings on the generator's root, ringing up to 8 s. VOVOWELThree formants morphing through vowels, driven. TATAPEEcho through a worn head: dropouts, saturation, age, hiss under the sound. RSREVERSEWindows of the sound played backwards, fed back. SPSPRINGA spring tank, with its chirps. GLGLITCHBent buffers: jumps and stutters through the last 0.74 s, never at another pitch. CLCLOUDLong grains under a slow cloud: pitched, dark, smeared. SCSCREAMA shaped feedback howl. RIRINGA diode ring modulator modulating itself. SVSTARVEStarved, gated fuzz (after the Fuzz Factory). CBCHEBA harmonic re-voicer using Chebyshev polynomials (after Airwindows' Pafnuty). BKBANKAn inharmonic resonator bank: bar, plate, bell, membrane (after Mutable Instruments' Rings). SMSMEARThe sound through twenty random taps over 12 to 46 ms: a grainy haze rather than a room. DFDIFFUSEFour allpasses in series (lengths from Mutable Instruments' Clouds): blurred edges, no tail of its own. SWSLEWLimits how far the sound can move in one sample: highs turned into dark, grinding ramps (after Airwindows' Slew). XOXORThe sound combined bit by bit (XOR, AND, OR) with itself a moment earlier: broken and digital, but following its shape. DSDUSTHiss and crackle where the sound moves, none where it is still (after Airwindows' TapeDust). WSWAVESETThe sound cut at its zero crossings into its own small cycles, replayed a group at a time: repeated, reversed, shuffled or left out (after Trevor Wishart). XMXMODThe sound against its own copy 1 to 40 ms back: folded, diode ring or a comparator (after Mutable Instruments' Warps). CSCHAOSA double-well oscillator pushed by the sound: light, a resonance at a fixed pitch; harder, rough; hardest, jumping between its wells. SRSPIRALA pitch shifter inside a feedback delay: every repeat transposed again, so echoes climb or fall in endless staircases. Its splice runs from smooth to the raw glitch of the Eventide H910. SOSOURCELPC, from IRCAM's source-filter tradition: the sound's body kept, its source replaced by noise (a whisper) or a buzz tuned to the generator's root; the body can be held. ENENVELThe sound's shape, not its colour: attacks taken away so plucks become swells (Schaeffer's cut bell), attacks sharpened, or the envelope inverted so decays come back up. LGLPGA Buchla low-pass gate struck by the sound's onsets, with a source of uncertainty drawing each strike's decay and colour. BABARBERA comb that rises or falls for ever: four sweeping taps faded in and out, a Shepard-Risset flanger; still in the middle of its rate. SKSTICKStick-slip friction: the sound drags a sprung mass that sticks and slips. Squeaks, creaks, bowed chatter, rubbed glass. MPMORPHOSpectral delay after Poullin's Morphophone (GRM, 1953): six bands, each delayed and fed back on its own, so attacks fan out into chirps. DIDISINTEGRATEShort read heads in series, pushed back by the sound's own level: smeared and granulated by how hard it is hit (after Airwindows). RDREEDThe sound blows a clarinet: a reed and a bore tuned about the generator's root (after the Synthesis ToolKit). Squawks, overblowing, multiphonics; it rests when the sound stops. NLNLFDobson's nonlinear filter: from a resonant filter into pitched buzz, squeals and chaos, its nonlinearity riding the sound's level. SUSUBHARMUndertones, as on the Mixtur-Trautonium: two squares dividing the sound's zero crossings by 2 to 8, or the sound ring-modulated by them. Erratic on noise. PKSPARKEvery rising zero crossing fires a spark, a falling damped burst part tone, part noise, at the sound's level (after Airwindows' Nikola): electric pulse trains locked to the sound. CTCONTRASTSpectral contrast after GRM Contrast: twelve bands, the strong raised (noise turns tonal) or the weak (tones turn to breath); a trace keeps only the loudest few. BLBLURThe sound replaced by its slowly moving spectral shadow (after CDP's blur, GRM Evolution): twelve band levels following slowly, played again as drifting sines, noise or dust. DODOPPLERA virtual source on an orbit: the pitch bends as it passes, the level and the air's darkness follow its distance (after GRM Doppler, IRCAM Spat). GSGSMThe 13 kbit/s phone codec of the first digital mobiles, fed music: metallic, bubbling, pitch-hunting; frames can stutter. GYGENDYXenakis' dynamic stochastic synthesis applied to the sound: each period redrawn as a polygon whose corners and sides take random walks. ININVERTThe spectrum mirrored about a frequency: what was low is high, rhythm kept, timbre turned inside out (after the speech scramblers). SQSQUELCHUndersampled and drawn again by curves, a resonance at half the rate (after Airwindows' ZAcidLowpass): rings, aliases, squelches. DLDELAYA stereo delay (Tonitor's). At the edge of the molecule only, one at most. RVREVERBA stereo reverb (Tonitor's). At the edge of the molecule only, one at most.

Motion

Hold the right button: the screen says MOTION, and the molecule starts to move by itself. Hold it again to stop it (STILL); the molecule stays as it is then. Motion is the molecule doing what molecules do.

Thermal motion: Every disc drifts on a path that turns smoothly. Bonds stretch and pull like springs towards their length, discs that come too close push each other away, and the screen's edges turn them back. Each atom's place across the screen is its place in the stereo field.
Rearrangements: At the patch's motion rate, one event, drawn at random:

rewired (two in eight): the same atoms bond anew, each where it stands; the new bonds draw them together over a second or two, and each atom's sound crossfades from its old source to its new one;

an atom grown (two in eight): a new atom appears beside the atom it bonds to and swells into the molecule, its sound coming in dry and turning wet;

an atom pruned (one in eight): an outermost atom shrinks away, its sound turning dry and leaving the mix, and then it goes (never the last atom);

new values (three in eight): one atom's values glide to new ones, over the whole time until the next event.
The generator: Never touched: it is the voice, and the molecule goes on searching around it.

Nothing jumps: nothing is faded out or restarted, and the sound is a continuum. Only the values that can move smoothly glide; switches, such as a filter's type, keep what they are. The drift's pace follows the motion rate too: faster at a higher rate.

A patch saved while moving keeps the molecule as it was at that moment. The encoder press still draws a new molecule, and motion goes on with it.

The molecule moving — Motion: the discs drift and pull.

Hold the encoder on the molecule. One item at a time, its colour round the screen: SETTINGS, PATCHES, POWER. Turn for the next, press to choose, hold to go back. The molecule goes on sounding. The menu opens on the item you last went into, so after using PATCHES once, hold and press takes you straight back to the slots.

Settings

The patch's own settings, saved with it, one a page; the dots below say which. Turn to change the value; the arrows show which way it can go. A press goes to the next page (after the last, back to the molecule); a hold or a side button goes back. A new molecule keeps what you set; a loaded patch brings its own.

MOTION RATE: motion's events a minute, 6, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 67, 90 or 120 (20 to begin with).
MIX: how much of the sound is the effects, 0 to 100 % in steps of 5 (50 to begin with). At 0 only the generator is heard; at 100 only the atoms.
FX MORPH: how long the right button's new values take to arrive, 0 to 30 seconds, one second a step (0 to begin with: at once). Values that move smoothly, such as a filter's frequency, glide all the way; switches, such as a filter's type, change halfway through. A new molecule or a loaded patch ends a glide.

Patches

A hundred slots, numbered 0 to 99, four a row, three rows on the screen; turning past the bottom row scrolls on. An empty slot is outlined; a filled one is solid white; the chosen one is ringed in yellow. Turn to choose a slot. The slots open on the one you chose last.

Press: loads the slot's patch (LOADED 5). An empty slot says EMPTY 5, and the slots stay open.
Hold: saves the molecule there as it sounds now: its shape, its atoms' values and LFOs, the generator's patch, chord and clock, and its settings (SAVED 5). A filled slot is written over.
A side button: back to the molecule.

Patches are kept in the pedal's flash and survive switching off and installing a newer Molecular. The twelve slots of build 74 and earlier are now slots 0 to 11, with their patches in them. A save cut short by the power is completed the next time the pedal starts, and never harms the other slots.

The patch slots, one filled — PATCHES, slot 5 filled.

The patch slots scrolled to slot 42 — Scrolled on, at slot 42.

Power

POWER OFF?, NO first. YES switches the pedal off; NO goes back to the molecule, still sounding.

What the screen says

Word	Means
a family's name	A new molecule: its generator's family
REWIRE / NO REWIRE	The left button: bonded anew, or there was no other way to bond these atoms
FX	The right button: every atom's values drawn anew
LFO	The left button held: new LFOs
MOTION / STILL	The right button held: motion on, motion off
LOADED 5 / EMPTY 5	A slot loaded, or nothing there
SAVED 5 / FAILED 5	The molecule saved to a slot, or the save did not verify

Update mode

The install page puts the pedal in its update mode by itself. To do it by hand, hold both side buttons for 3 seconds while Molecular runs. The screen goes dark and the pedal waits for an install. Switching it off leaves update mode: the next start is Molecular again, unchanged.