Berlinan

Berlinan

A generative MIDI sequencer for macOS in the Berlin School style of 1970s Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze. It plays several short melodic loops that repeat, slowly shift against each other and change only a little at a time.

Download for macOS Version 1.3.1 for macOS 14 or later. Free and open source. Read the manual.
7 steps
5 steps
6 steps
Three loops of unequal length. The same notes, never the same combination, until they line up again. aligned again in 210 steps
The Berlinan window playing: three voice lanes (two plucks and a bass) with note strips and playheads, a transport bar with position, tempo and key, the harmony schedule, and a horizon strip announcing that Pluck 1 may mutate soon.
Two plucks, 16 and 15 steps long, over a 16-step bass. The horizon strip tells you what is about to change, so nothing surprises you mid-set.

It follows the rules of the genre

The engine follows a style manual compiled from about 225 video lessons by a Berlin School practitioner (the Synth Seeker YouTube channel). Four of its laws do most of the work.

Repetition earns change
A pattern plays verbatim several times before it may mutate, and every mutation has to earn its place again.
One scale for everyone
All voices share a scale. Transposition moves by scale degree, so the whole ensemble changes harmony together.
Phasing, not randomness
Voices run loops of different lengths and drift against each other. That slow shifting is one of the genre's signature effects.
Change on the bar
Nothing is left to chance note by note, and there is no swing. Changes are planned and arrive at the next bar or at the end of a voice's loop, so the groove stays steady.

It plays your synths

Berlinan is a MIDI instrument, not a DAW. Point Ableton Live tracks at its virtual output Berlinan Out, or pick a connected MIDI device and play hardware synths directly. Audio never passes through it.

INT Berlinan is the clock master.

EXT It follows MIDI clock from Live or a hardware sequencer.

LINK Ableton Link over your network, tempo and downbeat locked both ways.

Full ensemble template, one voice per MIDI channel. The Demo trio, the default, plays Pluck 1, Pluck 2 and Bass on channels 1 to 3; click a voice's channel in the app to move it anywhere from 1 to 16.
  • Pluck 1ch 1
  • Pluck 2ch 2
  • Bassch 3
  • Padch 4
  • Leadch 5
  • Heartbeatch 10

Made for playing live

Press play and an ensemble starts immediately, from a fresh seed every session. From there, every move is one press and lands on the next bar.

  • Degree buttonsMove the whole ensemble to another scale degree.
  • The B-partA contrasting second section in one press: a new chord progression and a new bass line.
  • Arranger autopilotBuilds a piece voice by voice, varies it, returns the theme and ends it. It runs on its own; you can override any step.
  • Density and ambient modeThin out or fill the whole mix, or slow changes down to about one a minute.
  • Melody extractionPulls a few accented notes out of a sequence and grows them into a lead line.
  • ScenesSlowly change your synths’ sound, for example open the filter, over eight bars with one click.
  • CC LFOsLet any knob of your synth breathe over 1 to 64 bars, live. Find its CC number in a list of more than 400 instruments from midi.guide.
  • CaptureEvery play-to-stop pass is kept as a take. Name your best ones, save them as multitrack MIDI files or drag them straight into Live.
  • MIDI learnMap play, degrees, new seed and snapshots to your controller and leave the laptop alone.

Get Berlinan

Download

The disk image is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens without security warnings. Drag Berlinan to Applications and press play.

Download version 1.3.1

The manual: every control explained, with marked screenshots.

Release notes and earlier versions

Build from source

Berlinan is free software under the GPL 2.0 or later. You need the Xcode command line tools; no Xcode project is involved. 

git clone --recursive https://github.com/jiripisa/berlinan.git
cd berlinan
./run.sh