I recently finished the largest set of changes I've made to my rhythm stage setup in 4.5y . The basic interface is similar, but I have a lot more flexibility, more control, more options, and it's easier to travel with. My favorite part is the speech recognition for calling chords. I started off playing mandolin and piano, and then over the years added progressively more expressive footdrums . I added a breath controller . I built out a complex but expressive system where these different interfaces could interact to let me produce a coherent rhythm section . After a frustrating experience moving from one Mac to another and wanting to simplify, I moved from the Mac to a Raspberry Pi , set it all up as a pedalboard , and then again as a lighter pedalboard . During the last year and a bit, however, I haven't been tinkering. It did what I wanted, in a reliable and portable fashion. And it was hard to modify: the pedalboard was static, and the Raspberry Pi code wasn't easy to get at either. Which was fine, and probably good for me! I just played a lot of gigs (23 Kingfisher , 3 Free Raisins , 3 Dandelion ) and got better at it. But then it started breaking. My whistle synth box didn't always come up, the drums sometimes needed an external DI, and a USB sound card snapped. Flying back from Atlanta my gear suffered rough enough treatment to bend a USB B connector, and it was clear my system needed some love. I started with the most urgent portion: the whistle synth. I had Claude por…

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