This manual explains the main functionality of the polaron. If not written otherwise, it is assumed that you perform these operations while the sequencer is running. Please note that – as the polaron itself – this manual is a work in progress.

First thing you might want to do after powering up, is to start the sequencer. As soon as you press the «Start/Stop» button you should see the step LEDs light up in sequence. Press again to stop the sequencer. If you sync the polaron to usb-midi, starting/stop your host sequencer will also start/stop the polaron.

A trigger is an activated step. A step that will produce a sound when the sequencer passes it.

• Press step 1 to 16 to activate/deactivate triggers for the currently selected instrument track (switch tracks by pressing the track buttons). Activated steps are indicated by a white LED.

When using the polarons internal clock to drive the sequencer, the tempo can be changed as follows:

• Press and hold the SHIFT button and the LENGTH button
• Rotate pot 1 to change the tempo, or
• Use track buttons to increment/decrement current tempo (top button increases the most, lowest button decreases the most)
• Rotate pot 2 to set swing amount (odd steps are slightly delayed)

The polaron can synchronize to incoming midi-clock via its micro-usb connector. Simply hook up the polaron to your computer and it will appear as a midi-device. Send midi-clock events to the polaron and it will start/stop and synchronize its tempo to your computer.

Other than that, the polaron does not react to incoming midi data (note-on / note-off, control-change, sysex events etc.). However there is experimental support in the polaron firmware to send out midi notes and control-change events, so you could use it as a hardware controller for your software drum-machine. Midi output is turned off by default. In order to activate it, you'll need to re-compile the firmware and activate the preprocessor directive SEND_MIDI_OUTPUT in the file Sequencer.h (and you can fine-tune the midi output in Sequencer.cpp)

In order to use the trigger input, the internal clock has to be deactivated by slowing down the tempo to the minimum:

• Stop the sequencer
• Press and hold the SHIFT button and the LENGTH button
• Slow down the tempo to the minimum by turning pot1 fully anti-clock wise. The LED next to the PLAY button will stop to blink and turn from green to white, which indicates that the internal clock is now deactivated (do the opposite to activate it again)
• Now press PLAY to arm the POLARON for incoming triggers. The sequencer will now advance one step, whenever it receives a trigger signal via the polarons trigger input (e.g from a eurorack modular synth). Use Start/Stop to hook into / by-pass the trigger stream.

To rotate a pattern clock/anti-clock wise

• Press and hold the "Set Pattern Length" button
• Rotate pot 2 to rotate the pattern

When turned on, the auto-mutate feature will automatically activate/deactivate triggers on a track each time a track pattern loops.

• Press and hold the "Set Pattern Length" button
• Press the track button to toggle auto-mutate

• Press and hold a track button
• Rotate pot 1 to change the overall track volume or pot 2 to pan the track from left to right. When panned hard left/right the stereo output can be used as two separate mono outputs (e.g track one fully left and all other tracks fully right).

To store/load projects, insert a FAT32 formatted Micro SD card into the SD Card Slot on the back of the polaron before powering it up. Loading and saving projects can only be done while the sequencer is stopped. To load a project

• Press and hold SHIFT-LOAD (PATTERN + SET1) and choose one of 16 projects to load by pressing step 1-16 To save a project
• Press and hold SHIFT-SAVE (PATTERN + SET2) and choose one of 16 project slots to save the project to

You have started the sequencer, programmed some triggers and now start to tweak the two knobs in great anticipation... and nothing happens. Is your polaron broken? Probably not. In order to change sounds, you'll need to record parameter locks. I made video explaining that: https://youtu.be/ZKRscCkvQ8I

Each instrument track has (up to) six parameters that change the sound. How can I change six parameters with only two knobs, you might ask? By switching between three parameter sets (see cheatsheet). The values of these six parameters are stored for each individual step in a pattern. When the sequencer passes a trigger, it recalls these six stored values and applies them to the sound engine. This 'per-step-automation' is cool, because it allows a single instrument to sound very different throughout a single pattern.

So how do you record parameter locks? In order to try out the following, it is recommended to create a simple pattern by setting some triggers on several tracks and running the sequencer.

• Press and hold "Parameter Locks" button
• Arm triggers for parameter recording
  • Arm all triggers of a track by pressing a track button. Armed steps turn from white to yellow (press again to disarm).
  • Arm individual triggers of a track by pressing step buttons.
• Once you've finished arming steps you can release the "Parameter Locks" button.
• Start recording parameters by rotating pot 1 or 2. Armed triggers (yellow), will now record the value of the pots when the sequencer passes them. You should hear sound changes now.
• Switch between recording Parameter 1/2, 3/4, 5/6 by pressing "Switch Param Set" buttons.
• In order to leave parameter recording mode
  • to disarm all steps from parameter recording and leave parameter lock mode, press the "Parameter Locks" button.
  • if you want to temporarily stop parameter recoding, press one of the "Switch Param Set" buttons (turning pot1/2 again will resume recording).

This probably sounds a bit complicated at first and might need some practice. But believe me, all the above steps can be done in a few seconds once you get the hang of it. And then it starts to be fun, because this flexible recording system allows you to slightly adjust one parameter of just one single armed step or radically change the sound of the whole sequence by arming many or all steps/tracks at the same time.

Pro tip: After recording little melodies with parameter locks, its fun to copy-paste some steps around: Just press and hold a source step and press one or several destination steps to copy-paste locked values.

As of firmware version 1.2 it is now possible record trigger conditions for a step. Trigger conditions are a simple way add variation into short patterns by allowing you to define whether a trigger is active/deactivated during loop iteration 1,2,3 and 4 of a pattern. Trigger conditions are recorded in the same way parameter looks are recorded.

• Activate parameter look recording for the steps you want to change the trigger conditions for (armed steps are indicated by an orange light)
• Change to Set 3 (Set 3 LED is green), then and press Set 3 again (Set 3 LED is blue) to enter trigger conditions mode.
• Use the four upper trackbuttons to set the trigger condition for loop iteration 1,2,3,4 of a pattern (T6 = iteration 1, T5 = iteration 2, T4 = iteration 3, T3 = iteration 4). A white track LED indicates that a trigger will be played in a specific iteration, a blue LED indicates that it is inactive.

An example:

• T6 is deactivated (blue), T5 and T4 is activated (white) and T3 is deactivated (blue). This means that a trigger with these settings will not play in the first iteration of the loop, will play in the second/third iteration of the loop, and will not play in the fourth iteration of the loop. After the fourth iteration of the loop, the whole thing repeats, i.e. starts again at the first iteration.

Note: As with all parameter locks, changes are only picked up by armed steps, once the sequencer passes an armed step. So while changing trigger conditions make sure the step is actually passed by the sequencer before you deactivate parameter lock recording.

Using patterns is a great way to add variation to a sequence. Create a first pattern that you like. Copy-paste it into another pattern slot. Change it. Copy-paste again. Switch back and forth, and so on.

The pattern model used by the polaron is a bit different to many other machines: The polaron uses individual patterns per track, and not "global" patterns that store information regarding all tracks. What does that mean?

In most other machines, when you switch from pattern 1 to pattern 2, all instrument tracks switch from pattern 1 to pattern 2. If your machine allows a maximum of 16 patterns you can program a variety of 16 different sequences. The polaron is more flexible in that it allows you to switch patterns on an individual track basis: Track 1 runs pattern 1, track 2 and 3 run pattern 3, track 4 runs pattern 2 and so on (much like Ableton Live clips, where each track freely change between several clips).

So whats the advantage? Variation: Instead of 16 different sequences, there are millions of possible combinations you can achieve using 6 tracks with 16 patterns each. Of course this doesn't mean that you can't easily switch all tracks from pattern 1 to pattern 2 at the same time...it just means that you don't have to.

Of course you can build all patterns from the ground, but its usually more fun to start with a base pattern and then copy-paste it into one or several new locations and then change the copies for variations:

To copy-paste a pattern:

• Press and hold the pattern button (the step that lights up in red indicates the currently running pattern of the selected track)
• Press and hold step 1 to 16 to select the source pattern to copy
• Press step 1 to 16 to paste the source pattern into a destination location (repeat to paste it into several destination locations)

(Yes, this needs three fingers in total)

Now you might want to switch to the destination pattern (see below) and create some variation by recording some parameter locks or by changing some triggers.

To switch all tracks to a new pattern:

• Press and hold the pattern button (the step that lights up in red indicates the currently running pattern of the selected track)
• Choose the destination pattern by pressing step 1 to 16
• Release the pattern button

Note: Changing patterns this way will also unmute all tracks when switching to the new pattern. If you don't want this, you can still switch all tracks at once by using the following method and selecting all tracks.

To switch only a selected number of tracks to a new pattern:

• Press and hold the pattern button (the step that lights up in red indicates the currently running pattern of the selected track)
• Select tracks to switch patterns by pressing one or several track buttons (selected tracks start to flash)
• Choose the destination pattern by pressing step 1 to 16
• Release the pattern button

Something not clear? Something missing? Please send me a mail, so that i can improve this manual. Thanks!