In a recent log I discussed the possibility of playing two FATCATs in "stereo", while connecting their patchbays together in order to create musical interactions between them. I've now had time to do a quick first test of this idea, and just wanted to post a video of the result. 

Note: Since most of my previous logs have been retrospectives, I also want to make clear that this is "present day" work I'm doing here.

As I mentioned in that other log, the patch functions haven't been tailored for this specific purpose. Also there's no way of syncing the tempo of connected devices at present. The test results are, lets say "interesting". I wouldn't say they exceeded expectations exactly, but I think there might be something there that can be built upon. 

I haven't yet had time to build proper second prototype device. So in the video below I've connected the prototype I used in earlier videos with a FATCAT-on-a-breadboard I had laying around. "Breadboard"-FATCAT has it's patchbay spliced out onto the small red breadboard between the devices. I made patterns on each device that would play nice together even when out of sync. 

It's slow going at first until I find a suitable patch combination. The interesting stuff starts around the 3 minute mark!

So at 3 minutes in I found an "instant techno party" patch combo I hadn't realized I'd put in there. What I liked about that one was that it created some real interactions between the musical output of the two devices. When I started changing the tempo of one device for example, the other one responded in a predicable (and musically interesting) way. 

The patches I tried earlier in the video definitely did something but they didn't sound that fun to listen to. More to the point, it wasn't clear that there was any interaction between the two devices beyond pure randomness. Some randomness can be fine but it has to be balanced with some predictable elements of the music.

Probably have to mull this one over a bit before I know what the next step is. But I think it's clear that there needs to be a separate set of patch functions in the firmware that's tailored specifically for inter-device patching. And for those to activate automatically when devices gets connected. Which would require devices to be "aware" of each other. Also tempo sync is needed. Just wish I had a few more k's of flash to work with...