Cong Burn Strokes v13.3

At first glance the 2024‑vintage Strokes looks like its MIDI‑only predecessors. The four programmable note lanes and accent lane still dominate the interface, surrounded by pattern and note choosers, the Matrix and Weights modulation sources, Shares randomisers, and the colourful Scope, which visualises modulation values in real time. The multiple page choosers and Voice Modulation section at the bottom point to vastly expanded capabilities elsewhere though.

Strokes has evolved from a clever MIDI sequencer to a sophisticated and original instrument in its own right.

When Strokes by Cong Burn (aka UK‑based software developer, producer and label owner John Howes) was last reviewed in SOS just over a year ago it was a VST3 and Audio Unit plug‑in for Windows and macOS, with an iOS‑compatible AUv3 version on the horizon. It was also a sequencer, pure and simple, albeit an unusual one, with multiple drum‑machine‑like trigger lanes, algorithmic generative features, and step‑driven modulation sources that ran inside your DAW, playing or modulating other virtual instruments. I thought it was brilliant, though you had to think laterally and know your DAW’s MIDI routing capabilities inside out to get the most out of it. One trip around the sun later, and what a change there’s been. So much so, that Strokes is easily worth another look.

Same Strokes/Different Strokes

Strokes of 2024 (currently v13.3) is a development of what came before, so in fact there’s still masses in common with earlier versions like the one I reviewed at www.soundonsound.com/reviews/cong-burn-strokes. That’s still worth a read if you want to get up to speed on some of the fundamentals here, and especially the ins and outs of the unusual Matrix and Weights modulation sources and the Shares randomisers. Also, because all of what follows now is new, there’s a lot of it, and some of it is pretty wild!

While the ability remains for Strokes to act as a MIDI sequencer and generator of MIDI CC messages, the headline news is that it can now run in a self‑contained manner as well, generating its own sounds.

Crucially, all eight note channels can either play back one‑shot or looping samples (mono or stereo, up to 32MB, in every audio format I tried including AAC and FLAC), or they can load one of the 24 synth engines of Mutable Instruments’ classic, open‑source (and sadly discontinued) Plaits Eurorack module. There’s everything from virtual analogue tone generators, through FM, additive, wavetable and granular oscillator types, to physical modelling, speech synthesis, synthetic drums and a chiptune oscillator. All the synthesis models load instantly, and they’re controlled with just four parameters that vary between models.

The Voices page, seen here in one of the new alternative colour themes, is Strokes’ onboard sound‑generation engine room. Each of the eight note channels can generate MIDI, replay samples, or become one of the 24 synth models of Mutable Instruments’ classic Plaits module. All channels have an identical, simple but flexible synthesis architecture, and accept multiple modulation streams.

Common to sample and synth channels alike are a clutch of other sound‑influencing parameters, including attack and release times for a simple attack‑decay envelope, a multi‑mode resonant filter, channel gain and pan position, and sends to the onboard reverb and delay. Those are fine by the way: in character the reverb is sparkly and spacious, the delay quite dark‑sounding. Both can be usefully modulated, but you’ll need to look to external alternatives in your DAW or iPad host to achieve more ambitious treatments, or even a ping‑pong delay effect for example.

The synth engines are just the start, though. Each channel/synth can also now accept up to nine simultaneous modulation streams, controlling various basic parameters like pitch (which is always constrained to scale notes, user‑selectable, to keep things musically coherent), envelope decay, and send levels. Additionally you can modulate specific parameters for each synth engine (clearly named in the interface, rather than being labelled generically, thank goodness), and for sampler channels modulate the sample start and end points, and bit‑depth and sample‑rate reduction. Modulation sources are the Weights and Matrix sources I described above, the accent channel, the channel’s envelope generator, and three preset mixes of the envelope and keyboard tracking.

Stroking, Not Drowning

Essentially, where Strokes of old already had an ability to generate interesting material that tended to be different from what you might generate conventionally, working in a more linear fashion in a DAW, the new features magnify that hugely.

The onboard sound generation is key in this: it’s just so much quicker, more immediate and convenient to work ‘in the box’ than have to configure virtual instruments in your DAW or iOS host, and it helps that the Plaits synth models frequently sound great, often with a sort of raw, contemporary character.

An alternative ‘B’ view of each voice reveals a note quantiser and additional modulation options.There’s also something unique about Strokes’ modulation scheme. Unlike conventional grooveboxes that might utilise LFOs, programmable pattern sequencers and recordable knob movements (and so on) to enliven repetitive pattern data, Strokes has nothing this traditional or predictable: modulation streams are always fundamentally interrelated to note data, and consequently notes and modulation sources interact in an organismic way. It can really feel alive, and it will certainly challenge most users to think differently.

Take for example a typical ducking effect you might set up in a DAW, with a bass drum keying the side‑chain of a compressor applied to a synth sound: Strokes can do that (via a Weights channel, triggered by a bass drum channel, modulating the synth channel’s gain), and masses more besides, in dozens of directions at once if you wish. It can lead to creations that sound desirably contemporary, and I personally found it hugely addictive: the system feels constantly prone to happy accidents, but is still very controllable. Now, much more than before, Strokes feels like a complete sequencing environment, self‑sufficient, synth‑oriented, that you might be quite content to work within either entirely, or until later stages of a production that eventually needs some vocals or live instruments, and other more deterministic input.

Performance Enhancement

The last groundbreaking feature in Strokes v3.13 is the Perform view. This visually busy page with its trio of X/Y pads and bank of crossfaders is built for live tweaking. As with other aspects of Strokes, though, all is not quite what it seems.

Easiest to grasp are some simple mirrors of groups of parameters that would otherwise be strewn across other pages: channel enables/mutes, the global reverb and delay, the Shares randomisers, the Matrix and its value knobs, channel note selection, and basic sampler controls. Also there’s a master saturator and compressor here — Heat and Glue — and they will remain active even if you navigate away from this page and do all your work elsewhere. That’s a particularly nice touch for anyone working standalone, to allow for some hotter and more controlled master output levels.

But those crossfaders: they don’t fade audio signals, but interpolate parameter values and note triggers between two patterns. One role for them is to let you morph smoothly and slowly between even radically dissimilar patterns, that could have quite different settings and modulation schemes. Or you could ‘play’ the crossfaders, to morph to different pattern content sporadically, rhythmically, on backbeats for example: the system is very responsive. What it can’t do, incidentally, is smoothly crossfade between dissimilar synth engines, or parameters with only on/off states, or discrete modes (like the filters). John Howes told me a scheme that could do this was once considered, but that it was too CPU‑intensive, requiring multiple instances of each channel’s synth engine to be running concurrently.

The colourful new Perform page is a tweaker’s delight, giving direct real‑time control over crucial parameters, for all channels at once. The crossfaders interpolate parameter values between two chosen patterns, and can either be ‘played’ or mined for new starting points.

However, there’s also creative potential in the crossfaders, because at points along the spectrum between two existing patterns can exist great, new, interpolated material that you didn’t quite generate yourself, but that you seeded and Strokes cultivated, so to speak. As you explore like this, the dozens of changing parameter values in the background are represented above the bank of crossfaders by a little visual squiggle (somehow reminiscent of images of DNA and viruses) in a box. And those boxes are draggable: grab your freshly‑mutated pattern with mouse or finger, drop it to one of the five pattern slots to the left or right, and it becomes a new, legitimate, recallable pattern that itself can spawn new patterns.

What’s great about this system is that it lets you go on creative journeys even if you only have a couple of patterns...

What’s great about this system is that it lets you go on creative journeys even if you only have a couple of patterns at starting points. Also, that it makes pre‑programmed sequences that might otherwise feel rigid actually very fluid. There’s no way to record what you do (other than literally record the various audio outputs from Strokes, as you tweak) but that’s very much the point of it: it’s a real‑time, live performance feature, not something to be programmed.

Digging in a little further, there’s some real subtlety on offer. First off, the uppermost crossfader has a ‘master’ role, in that it adjusts all 12 beneath it simultaneously. But each can be operated individually, to fade just a single voice channel or interpolate modulation and effects settings. Also, while it could seem that Perform page work obliterates your carefully‑honed patterns — after all, five pattern slots is not many — in fact it doesn’t. Existing patterns are loaded initially, but thereafter what happens in the Perform page stays in the Perform page: go back to the Sequencer view and you’ll now find a flashing ‘P’ under your pattern slots, showing that Perform page temporary operations currently have precedence. When you again select patterns A‑E you’ll find them exactly as you left them.

As for the two square X/Y pads, these offer functionality that is at least a little more familiar. On them you’ll find numbered, draggable ‘pucks’, relating to the programmable channels 1‑4, logic channels 5‑8, or all eight at once. What the positions of these pucks denote are the current channel modulation amounts (X axis) and the static values (Y axis) for the parameter chosen in the pop‑up menu above. By dragging the pucks directly, you can very much ‘play’ parameters in real time.

That just leaves the central, octagonal pad. This is a sort of relative value adjuster, with an intriguing geometric bent. Again, you choose the channel parameter it’ll control, on all eight note channels simultaneously, in the pop‑up menu. Then, as you drag the puck away from its neutral middle position, cobweb lines appear representing parameter value changes. Channel numbers you move towards have their parameter values increased, and the ones you leave behind have them decreased. It’s impossible to generalise what can be achieved here, because it’s so dependent on exactly what you have loaded to each channel, and your starting point parameter values. Working with filter cutoff frequency, for example (and assuming you’re running low‑pass filters on each channel), it could brighten the channels you move towards, spotlighting them and making them louder, while darkening others. Just like the X/Y pads, it’s very responsive, supporting flick‑type gestures to make fast‑moving changes in sound if necessary, and working in either a momentary or latching way.

Strokes occupies a pretty much unique position amongst software tools, with an environment, workflow, and underlying feel that’s much nearer to a well‑stocked modular/Eurorack case than to most DAWs.

Master Strokes

As I mentioned in last year’s review, Strokes occupies a pretty much unique position amongst software tools, with an environment, workflow, and underlying feel that’s much nearer to a well‑stocked modular/Eurorack case than to most DAWs. Consequently, it’s not what you’ll naturally choose if you’re into acoustic styles or rock music: it’s unashamedly electronic, specialised towards the minimal, experimental and glitchy.

It’s also full of apparent limitations. Note lane triggers are strictly monophonic and purely percussive, with no concept of note pitch or velocity of their own, and no possibility to tie grid steps to achieve notes of longer duration, or program ratchets. The only way to achieve changes in pitch is through loading of pre‑defined note sets, modulation, or in a more limited and very specific way via live input from a MIDI controller. This aspect alone can pull you up sharply, to begin with at least, when first transitioning from a traditional DAW.

I could go further. The maximum of only five patterns per project really focuses the mind, as do the synths’ and sampler’s rather limiting AD envelope with no hold stage and brief (circa 3 seconds) maximum release times that preclude generating any sustaining atmospheres or ‘pads’. I’m sorry the channel pitch quantisers can’t be disabled: although the new tuning features can introduce microtonal spice you can never break away from the concept of scales completely (as you easily can in Eurorack, for example). Conversely, just duplicating a note set with the intent of quickly transposing pitches to explore other harmonies is a real faff if you have note quantisers in play, requiring you to go through and reconfigure them on every single channel. All of this contrives to make Strokes a better playground for rhythms than for melodies or harmonies.

However, the idea is that limitation stimulates creativity: that force burns bright in Strokes. The particularity of the design and undoubted degree of quirkiness here channels users into ways of working that are very different to traditional, linear‑leaning DAWs, and can be simultaneously challenging and exhilarating. I’ve mentioned the similarity in character to Eurorack modular elsewhere, and that observation is more valid now than ever in Strokes, with the multiple Plaits engines and modulation paths running all over. You would need to invest heavily to create a rack that could replicate even a small part of what Strokes can achieve, and it would struggle to ever match its ease of integration with DAWs and MIDI sound sources, both virtual and tangible. I wonder, in fact, if for many users Strokes might actually prove the more enjoyable and fruitful option.

Strokes of 2024 is a huge success. Compared to some plug‑ins it’s downright cheap, but it’s also one of the most interesting electronic music playgrounds I can think of.

All told, Strokes of 2024 is a huge success. Compared to some plug‑ins it’s downright cheap, but it’s also one of the most interesting electronic music playgrounds I can think of. Despite a few interface concepts that may not be immediately intuitive it’s surprisingly quick to learn and get nice results from: a good, succinct PDF manual helps with that, as does a great overview video on the Cong Burn website. Working with Strokes, I frequently got the impression that it was giving back at least as much as I put in, which is a rewarding and energising thing to experience, and actually the mark of any top‑class musical instrument. With the new sample and synth engines, and Perform page, a vast amount of musical potential has been added without compromising immediacy, and with a nice sense of balance between what can be now be achieved ‘in the box’ and what’s possible when hooking up to a wider ecosystem. There’s creative potential, open‑endedness and aliveness here that few other single plug‑ins and iPad apps can match.