Stepling brings the workflow of a classic hardware pitch sequencer to the Reason rack in a compact 2U device.
It is built around eight stages, and each stage is far more than a single note: it holds a pitch, a pulse count of 1–8 (how many steps the stage lasts), one of six gate modes, one of eight ratchet patterns, and slide and skip switches. That per-stage depth is what lets a handful of settings unfold into long, musical sequences.
A built-in quantizer keeps everything in key. Choose from 30 scales — from major and minor through modal, symmetric and world scales — and any of 12 root notes, and Stepling snaps every pitch to the scale as it plays. A live keyboard strip on the display always shows which notes are in key, and updates the moment you change scale or root, even when the sequencer is stopped.
Sixteen play directions reshape how the eight stages are traversed — forward, reverse, ping-pong, pendulum, pivot, shuffle, chord order, several random and Brownian walks, plus “fixed” variants that flatten the pattern to one step per clock. Global controls cover rate (1/1 to 1/32T with swing), gate time, smooth analog-style slide, octave range and transpose, step division, sequence length (1–16, wrapping past 8 for longer patterns), and internal or external clocking.
As a CV device, Stepling does not make sound itself — it outputs pitch (as note values, 0–127), a gate, and a once-per-cycle sync pulse to drive any Reason instrument, and offers a deep set of CV inputs so almost every parameter can be modulated. Run it on its internal clock to stay locked to Reason’s transport, or switch to external clocking to advance one step per pulse from another device.
Eight per-stage pitch outputs and matching per-stage pitch inputs let you link two or more units together: a second Stepling (or its 4U sibling, Step Farther) can follow the master’s notes while keeping its own gates, ratchets and timing, for harmonised or rhythmically independent layers. Stepling saves its entire state with your song, so there are no patches to manage.
