FLUKE

The panel

Black Silver

Click any knob, jack, button, the encoder or the screen. Everything shown is at its default setting. Fluke comes in two panels, silver and black: Rack picks one from its own dark-panel setting, and you can force either from the module's right-click menu.

Catching a loop

Every track is a source of random voltage. On each clock pulse (scaled by the track's Rate) it picks a new value in the style you chose, sends it to its CV output, and sends a gate to its GATE output if the step passes Chance. The track remembers what it played: the last 64 steps, together with which of them fired.

CATCH turns what just played into a loop

Press a track's CATCH button and the last Length steps that played become that track's loop (the default Length is 16 steps; at most 64). The button lights. From then on the track plays the loop instead of choosing new values. The first time round it plays exactly what you caught. Press the button again to release it, and the track goes back to throwing fresh values.

If a track hasn't played anything yet there is nothing to catch, and the button stays dark.

MUTATE: how much the loop changes each time round

At the end of every pass of a caught loop, each step is replaced by a fresh value in the track's style with a probability set by the track's MUTATE knob, and a fresh Chance roll comes with it. At 0% the loop repeats exactly, however long it runs. At 100% every step is replaced every pass, so it behaves like a free track. In between, the loop slowly wanders. MUTATE works on caught loops only.

What stays live on a caught loop

A loop stores the values and which steps fired, not the voltages. So Range, Quantise, Scale, Root, Slide, Chance, Rate and Direction all keep working on a caught loop, and the loop at fixed settings repeats exactly. Re-quantise a caught loop into another key, or shrink its Range, and the same pattern comes out transformed.

CATCH ALL

The CATCH ALL button catches every track that is still free. If every track is already caught, it releases them all. A trigger into the CATCH ALL jack does the same.

Chance, and why a missed step holds

A step that misses its Chance is skipped: it sends no gate and the CV holds its previous value. This is deliberate, so a note's release tail never changes pitch under it. The missed step is still recorded with its roll, so a caught loop keeps its rhythm of hits and misses.

Breathe: whole passes of silence

At the end of each pass, a track rests for the whole next pass with a probability set by Breathe: no gates, and the CV holds. It lets a loop drop out and come back.

The screen and encoder

Nearly every setting lives on the screen, which you work with the encoder (the large knob). There are two levels, and one gesture moves between them: click and hold the encoder (about two-thirds of a second, without turning it).

1. Select. Turn the encoder to pick a track. The ninth stop after track 8 is GLOBAL, the settings that belong to the whole module. The screen shows the track, whether it is caught or free, its style, rate and length, and its last 32 steps.
2. Click and hold to go in. A thin amber line grows along the top of the screen while you hold (about two-thirds of a second), and the settings open when it reaches the end. Now turn to scroll through the settings (the screen shows the group, the setting's name and where you are in the list). Click to edit: the value turns amber and underlined. Turn to change it, then double-click to finish. A single click while editing does nothing, so a click that lands late can never throw you out of the edit.
3. Click and hold to come back out. Holding always steps back one level: if you are editing a value, it finishes the edit; hold again and you are back at Select.

Clicking a track's number at the left of its row, or touching its CATCH button or MUTATE knob, also picks that track on the screen. The picked track's number lights up. The encoder remembers where you were in each list. Settings that run from 0 to 100% (Chance, Slide, Breathe, Gate length), BPM and Length move one step at a time, and in bigger steps (5, or 4 for Length, 5 for BPM) when you turn quickly.

What the screen shows

The top line shows where you are (SELECT, TRK 3 or GLOBAL) and whether the track is CAUGHT or FREE. Below it are the style, rate and length (or, inside the settings, the group and setting name and your place in the list), and the big line is the value. Along the bottom are 32 bars. On a free track they are the last 32 steps that played. On a caught track they are the loop, in amber, with a white bar on the step playing now.

Start-up and the screensaver

When Fluke loads, the FLUKE wordmark builds on the screen and dissolves. After a minute without a touch (the right-click menu can turn this off or make it five minutes) the screen becomes a small scene: a whale's tail rising from a night sea. Each track that fires opens a ripple on the water at its own place along the surface (a caught loop's ripple is brighter), and any firing makes the tail dip and throw a few drops. The first turn or click of the encoder only wakes the screen and changes nothing. Touching a CATCH button or MUTATE knob wakes it too, and does its usual job.

Track settings

Pick a track, click and hold, and these are the settings, in the order you meet them. Each track has its own set. Defaults are shown in brackets.

The scales are: Chromatic · Major · Natural minor · Harmonic minor · Dorian · Phrygian · Lydian · Mixolydian · Major pent · Minor pent · Blues · Hirajoshi · In-Sen. A note halfway between two scale notes snaps down.

Styles

A style is the shape of the randomness: how the values are spread across the track's Range.

Directions

Direction decides the order a caught loop plays its steps in. A free track picks a new random value every step, so its order doesn't matter.

Rate

The clock is one pulse per beat (see Global settings). Rate multiplies or divides that for each track, so tracks can run against each other.

Global settings

Pick GLOBAL (the stop after track 8), click and hold, and these are the settings.

One key or eight. Leave every track on Global and the whole module plays in one key: change Scale and Root once. Set a track's own Scale or Root and it goes its own way, for a bass in minor pentatonic under a lead in the full minor scale, or a drone a fifth away.

Patching

Not polyphonic. Every output is a single channel. Each track has a small light by its CV jack that follows the voltage, and another by its GATE jack that is lit while the gate is high.

Right-click menu

Every setting is in the right-click menu too, so you can use the encoder or not. The menu works on the track the screen is on. Pick a track by clicking its number at the left of its row (it lights up, and the others sink back), by touching its CATCH or MUTATE, by turning the encoder, or from Track at the top of the menu. Then: that track's settings are listed first, then the module's. Percentages and numbers are sliders (drag, or click or right-click a slider and type a value, then Enter).

The patch saves every setting, and each caught track's loop, so a patch reopens exactly as you left it.

Installing

Fluke is sold through the VCV Library, for Mac (Apple Silicon or Intel), Windows and Linux.

1. Add Fluke to your account on its VCV Library page.
2. In Rack, log in from the Library menu and choose Library > Update all. Rack downloads Fluke and any other plugins you own.
3. Restart Rack if it asks you to, then add Fluke from the module browser, under Ormer Modular.

Fluke needs Rack 2.

Troubleshooting

Nothing is moving.

Fluke needs a clock to step: patch one into CLOCK, or unplug it to use the internal clock. Check Run and Freeze in the Global settings: Run should be On and Freeze Off.

CATCH won't light.

A track can only catch what it has played. Wait for it to step at least once. If the track's Rate is slow, that can take a while.

The loop never changes.

MUTATE at 0% repeats the loop exactly. Turn the track's MUTATE up. MUTATE does nothing to a free track.

A gate is missing, and the CV didn't change.

That step missed its Chance (or the track is resting through a Breathe pass). A missed step holds the CV on purpose.

I can't change BPM.

A clock is patched into CLOCK and sets the tempo. The screen shows its BPM and marks it EXT. Unpatch it to edit BPM.

The tempo reads as a multiple of what I expect.

Fluke counts each incoming pulse as one beat. A clock that sends 4 or 24 pulses per beat reads 4 or 24 times too fast: set each track's Rate to /4 or /24 to bring them back to a beat.

The screen shows a tail on the sea and the encoder won't change anything.

That is the screensaver. The first turn or click wakes the screen and does nothing else. Turn it off or lengthen it in the right-click menu.

The notes aren't in my key.

Quantise must be On for the track. Then check the track's Scale and Root: if they're on Global, the Global Scale and Root decide.

The panel won't change colour.

Use the module's right-click Panel menu. If it is set to Follow Rack setting, Rack's View > Use dark panels if available decides.

Specifications

Fluke's engine is original. It uses no third-party DSP. Fluke is closed-source and proprietary.