Researching and designing a gate sequencer

(Forgot to post this, but it was done on the 16th of February)

To look into more complex themes for my autozither, I’ve added a sequencer that will rhythmically play the motors.

Looking at how sequencers work on a synthesiser, there are two parts, the rhythmic sequencer and the pitch sequencer. Because I am purely controlling motors, the pitch part is not needed (good for me).

Looking at some designs and getting myself a breadboard kit and a cd4017 chip, I looked into making a sequencer. I also watched some DIY synth videos and was heavily inspired by Moritz Klein’s 5-step sequencer. But I did not want to do the exact same thing as his version. Because of this, I want to have 8 steps instead of 5, so you can more easily make standard rhythms. But along with this, I still wanted 5 steps to experiment with different rhythms. For this, I need a switch that can go in between 8-steps and 5-steps. As the 4017 chip goes up to 9 (technically 10, but that last step is needed to reset the chip, making a loop), I could technically have a switch that goes from 1 to 9 steps, but I won’t use it, and it over-complicates the circuit for someone that is completely new to this.

With my final design, I will have switches on the lights/circuits to turn on and off the signals, making a controllable sequencer. Once I’m happy with the prototyping, I can attempt doing this on a stripboard instead of a breadboard because a breadboard is more final and is harder to fall apart.