Glitch Sequencer

A trigger sequencer driven by Conway's Game of Life. You paint a seed pattern on a cellular grid and let the automaton evolve it — cells being born fire gates, so the rhythm mutates, breathes, and occasionally erupts into chaos while staying anchored to your seed.

How it works

Each clock pulse at Step advances the automaton one generation: cells live, die, or are born from their neighbours. Whenever a cell is born on a square that one of the eight trigger layers marks, that layer's gate fires a brief pulse. After Length generations the grid loops back to your seed. One deliberate quirk gives the module its name — the working grid is never wiped between generations, so ghost cells linger and re-fire, lending the rhythm its glitchy, slightly unpredictable edge.

Controls

• Seed layer — paint the starting pattern; it's the genome every sequence grows from, and small changes cascade into very different rhythms.
• Trigger layers 1–8 — eight colour-coded tabs, one per gate output; mark the cells whose birth should fire each output.
• Length — how many generations play before the grid snaps back to the seed (1–64).

Inputs & outputs

• Step — advance one generation; patch a clock here to set the tempo.
• Reset — return the automaton to your seed.
• Gate 1–8 — one per trigger layer; each fires a short trigger when a marked cell is born. Patch them to drums, envelopes, or anything that likes a pulse.

Tips

• Sparse seeds give sparse, evolving grooves; dense seeds erupt then thin out — great for fills.
• Nothing fires until you mark cells on a trigger layer: the grid animates but stays silent. Mark a square the automaton keeps reviving and that gate locks into a groove; mark a fleeting cell for sparse, unpredictable hits.
• Short Length values keep the pattern hugging your seed; longer ones let the automaton wander further before resetting.