bennniii: Six MIDI Devices, 117,000 Downloads, One Idea
Six devices. All MIDI effects. All rated 5/5. All published in 2014, within about three months of each other. Together they account for 117,150 downloads, and one of them — POLYRHYTHMUS — is responsible for 99,404 of those. That is an unusually concentrated body of work, and it has an unusually clear shape.
The through-line: play the sequencer, don't program it
Nothing in bennniii's catalogue makes sound. There is no synth, no reverb, no saturation. Every device sits on a MIDI track and changes what notes arrive, when they arrive, or what state Live is in when they do. That narrow focus is the point.
Look at what the six devices actually solve and a pattern shows up fast:
- Generating rhythm from rules instead of drawn-in notes (POLYRHYTHMUS)
- Re-timing notes you play into a grid (SAMBA)
- Turning held notes into material a sequencer can chew on (SIMPLE LATCH, CLIP SEQUENCER)
- Driving a non-note parameter from the keyboard (KEYPITCHER)
- Recalling whole banks of parameter values from clip names (AUTOMAT)
Each one removes a step where you would otherwise stop, open a clip, and edit something with the mouse. The devices assume you have hands on a keyboard and a set running. The recurring design move is to take a thing Live normally handles through the editor or automation envelopes and expose it to real-time playing instead.
POLYRHYTHMUS: the one everyone has
A modular euclidean rhythm builder, added July 2014, last updated October 2017 at version 1.01. Nearly 100,000 downloads and 101 comments. If you have spent any time with euclidean sequencing in Live, there is a good chance this is the device that introduced you to it.
Euclidean sequencing distributes a number of hits as evenly as possible across a number of steps. Three hits in eight steps, five in sixteen, seven in twelve — the results land somewhere between familiar dance patterns and things you would never draw by hand. The "modular" part of the name is what separates POLYRHYTHMUS from a single-generator toy: multiple rhythm generators, running at their own lengths, producing patterns that drift against each other and only line up every few bars.
Practical routing: put it in front of a Drum Rack and assign each generator's output to a different pad. Give the kick a generator with a 16-step length so it stays anchored, then set a hat or percussion generator to 7, 11 or 13 steps and let it rotate against the kick. The phase relationship does the composing. Record the output to a MIDI clip once you find a window you like, then edit from there.
Two things to know before you install. It was built against Live 9.1.2 and Max 6.1.7, so it predates a lot of what is now standard in Max for Live. And the developer's own note, dated January 2016, describes POLYRHYTHMUS 2 as almost finished with no date attached. Version 1.01 is what exists. Given 99,404 downloads and a 5/5 rating, that has not stopped anybody.
CLIP SEQUENCER and SIMPLE LATCH: a pair that works together
These two arrived on the same day, 13 April 2014, and updated on the same day in June. They are the clearest statement of the catalogue's underlying idea.
CLIP SEQUENCER uses MIDI clips to sequence notes you are playing in real time. You hold a chord on a keyboard; the clip decides the rhythm and which notes of the chord fire. The device reads clips via the Live Object Model and sorts incoming notes logically and in real time, re-sorting as you change the chord. It comes in two parts: one for the MIDI track that receives your input, and a second component elsewhere. That split makes it slightly more work to set up than a single-track drop-in, so budget a few minutes the first time.
What it gets you is a clean separation between harmony and rhythm. The clip is your arpeggio pattern. Your hands supply the notes. Change one without touching the other. For live performance this is much faster than keeping twelve variations of the same pattern transposed across different chords.
SIMPLE LATCH is the obvious partner. It holds notes and chords so you do not have to keep a hand down, and it includes a temporary unlatch for breaking out of a held chord briefly. The detail worth noting: latch can be engaged after the chord has been struck. Most latch implementations want you to arm first, which means committing to the idea before you know whether you like the voicing. Here you play, hear it, then decide to keep it. Then your hands are free for the mixer, a filter, or a second keyboard.
SAMBA: delay that snaps to steps
SAMBA is described as a step sequencer delay for MIDI notes. Incoming notes are assigned to steps of your choosing, and those steps are delayed. The result is not an echo in the audio sense — it is a re-timing device. Play loosely and the notes land on a grid you defined, offset from where you played them.
Version 1.1 added mute switches, fixed note irregularities, and added a randomizer. The mutes matter more than they sound: being able to drop individual steps out while a pattern runs turns a static delay into something you perform. The randomizer gives you variation without reprogramming.
The device's own description points at counterpoint, and that is the right frame. Feed it a simple line, let the delayed copy fall on off-steps, and you get two voices from one performance. It pairs naturally with SIMPLE LATCH upstream — hold a chord, let SAMBA scatter it across the bar.
AUTOMAT and KEYPITCHER: the utilities
AUTOMAT is the odd one out and, at 4,902 downloads, the second most popular device in the set. It maps up to 12 parameters anywhere in your set and stores up to 12 presets for them. You recall a preset by naming a clip accordingly. Launch the clip, the settings snap.
The stated argument is that this is simpler than automation envelopes, and it is particularly suited to moving between sections of a song. That holds up. Envelopes are per-clip and per-parameter; drawing the same twelve moves into every clip is tedious and fragile. Naming a clip "1" and having twelve parameters jump to a stored state is a different kind of workflow — closer to a scene recall on a hardware mixer. It also survives rearranging your set, since the recall lives in the name rather than in a particular clip's envelope data.
KEYPITCHER is the smallest idea in the catalogue and a genuinely useful one. It lets you play the transposition parameter of something — a Drum Rack, a sampler — from a keyboard. Put it on its own MIDI track, set that track's input to your controller, map it to the transposition parameter you want to move, and set a base note that corresponds to the current value. Then play. The device's own suggestion is to try an arpeggiator into it, which turns a single sampled hit into a pitched, rhythmic line without loading a sampler instrument at all.
Where to start
Start with POLYRHYTHMUS. A 5/5 rating across 101 comments and just under 100,000 downloads makes it the safest install in the set, and it is the one that changes what a session sounds like rather than how it is operated. Give it an afternoon with a Drum Rack and nothing else.
Second, take SIMPLE LATCH and CLIP SEQUENCER as a unit, because they were designed as one. They are the fastest route into playing chords against fixed rhythmic patterns, which is a live-performance capability rather than a studio trick.
Add SAMBA when you want a second voice out of a single line, and KEYPITCHER when you need to pitch something that is not a pitched instrument. AUTOMAT is worth the setup time only once your set is big enough that parameter recall has become a real chore — at which point it becomes the most valuable device here.
One practical caveat across all six: these were built for Live 9.1 and Max 6.1, and the newest of them was last updated in 2017. Test them in a copy of your set before you commit to them for a show. That is standard practice for devices of this vintage, and the download counts suggest a lot of people have found them worth the check. If generative MIDI is the territory you are exploring, the maximedangles catalogue covers adjacent ground with a larger device count.