bela-trails

Bela Trails

Draw four channels of CV with your fingertips

22 HP Eurorack module

Bela Trails is a 22HP polyphonic touch-surface gesture recorder for Eurorack. It captures finger movement on a large central capacitive touchpad as four independent channels of X/Y position plus gate (finger up/down), with up to 40 seconds of recording per channel. A dedicated 10x85mm Touch Bar below the pad adds macro slew, playback speed, Euclidean rhythm division and fader-bank interpolation. Four interface modes (selected by the unlabeled Mode button, indicated by an RGB LED) repurpose the same touchpad for drawing, scrubbing a timeline, controlling eight vertical touch faders, and transforming previously recorded gestures around a central origin marked by an asterisk on the panel. CV outputs (8 CV + 4 gates + MIDI) live on a separate breakout submodule; the main 22HP panel exposes only the inputs (clock plus four assignable CVs) and the performance interface. Trails is a controller, sequencer, quantizer, LFO and envelope source all driven from one expressive playing surface.

Features

  • Four-channel polyphonic touch-surface gesture recorder
  • Large 85x85mm multitouch capacitive Touch Pad with shine-through LEDs
  • 10x85mm capacitive Touch Bar for macro slew, speed, Euclidean division and fader-bank interpolation
  • Up to 40 seconds of recording per channel
  • Four interface modes selected by a single Mode button: Record, Meter, Fader, Transform
  • Transform mode warps recorded gestures (rotate, pinch, offset) around a panel-marked center origin
  • Eight vertical touch-faders in Fader mode for macro performance control
  • Scale quantiser with two-octave on-pad scale picker
  • Step (S&H) mode converts continuous gestures into clock-locked stepped CV
  • Non-destructive Undo / Redo history across gestures and transforms
  • External CLK In for quantised playback, with per-channel multiply/divide
  • Four assignable CV inputs for per-channel reset or modulation

Controls & Jacks (17)

  • CLK In
  • CV In 1
  • CV In 2
  • CV In 3
  • CV In 4
  • Ch 1
  • Ch 2
  • Ch 3
  • Ch 4
  • Mode
  • Undo
  • Scale
  • Step
  • Play
  • Rec
  • Touch Pad
  • Touch Bar

How-To Guides

  • Drawn 4-Voice Melodic Accompaniment
  • Polyrhythmic Modulation
  • Fader-Bank Performance Macros
  • Transform-Recorded Morph

Explore the interactive Trails panel on BleepDex — tap any control to learn what it does.

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