Approaching: norns

[ModularGrey]

This is great, a logical step. I’m hoping the price is 800 or less. Probably will be an instabuy for me. Wondering if the built in apps will have support for the 256, also support for multiple grids and/or controllers, guess it probably just depends on the app. I feel like this will be great paired with my MPC Live.

[rikrak]

I found Pico-8 was not a good way to get into Lua because it is running a simplified vwrsion of Lua (plus some extra stuff pertaining to 8-bit games).

Also, the coding page of the interface is quite cramped… Maybe that won’t bother me now I love Teletype…

[capogreco]

Bloody nice one. @trickyflemming

I would add:

• cmd + enter executes one line of code,
• or put your code between ( ) to execute it all together,
• cmd + shift + D to search the documentation, or
• cmd + D to search for current selection.

and, importantly, like @trickyflemming mentioned, cmd + . kills all active synths.

SuperCollider comes packaged with a bunch of documentation, including some really good tutorials to get you started. Dive in.

For those who learn better from video (although already linked in the Supercollider tips, Q/A) this also seems like an appropriate moment to recommend Eli Fieldsteel’s SuperCollider Tutorials. They are really good: well-paced, enlightening.

One last thing that I wish someone told me when I was just starting out: if you are interested in live-coding, you will find everything you need by searching for JITLib in the SuperCollider documentation.

[markeats]

definitely caught my attention with the use of supercollider, i have lots of questions but will wait (a little)

[LLK]

I might be dead wrong but I think there’s much much much more pocket pianos out there in the world than there ever was grids or any other monome release for that matter.

[trickyflemming]

For those who learn better from video (although already linked in the Supercollider tips, Q/A) this also seems like an appropriate moment to recommend Eli Fieldsteel’s SuperCollider Tutorials . They are really good: well-paced, enlightening.

D’oh! I really should have mentioned these. Excellent recommendation. This, in my opinion, is the single best resource for starting to learn SC. They’re long videos, but worth it. Videos 0-8 will likely be the most important for Norns. 3, 4, & 5 are the keys for most of SC. 8 is useful if you plan on building anything using samples or recording. After video 8, it dives into MIDI, sequencing, external control, and composition. Depending on how the Lua end of Norns looks, these might not be as critical.

[kin.sventa]

i don’t know the first thing about coding but mlr in a box is all i need to hear. i would be more than happy coping and pasting the work of you cool folks. if it could also send cv into an es-8 i would be overjoyed. how cool would a knobs video with this thing be!??!?!?

[garethlyons]

Me too. The syntax looks similar to teletype I managed to wrap my head around the basics of that. I’m hopping we won’t have to mess around with too much coding unless you really want to customise.

[jah]

Eli Fieldsteel’s SuperCollider Tutorials.

These are great

20 chars

[x2mirko]

For anyone wondering: Here is the playlist of the mentioned tutorial videos. Thank you a lot for pointing them out! I just started going through these and they seem very helpful so far.

[garethlyons]

Very good tutorials watch the first few last night. I’m wondering will learning Sc in depth be absolutely necessary? If we can upload pre existing engines on to norns.

[x2mirko]

I assume that it’s entirely optional since there will be plenty of sound engines to use that other people made. I think it’ll be much more useful to any individual musician / composer to learn a bit of lua so you can build your individual control scheme for existing engines.

I’m mainly learning supercollider because I love this sort of stuff

[emp]

This seems awesome. But wonder a few things:

1. Lua seems really nice and all, but if i already know sc, would it be possible to do everything in there instead? If not, why?
2. How is the performance compared to ”similar” devices, like Organelle? I’ve tried running sc on my Organelle and, honestly, it’s quite easy to hit the ceiling.

[infovore]

I think the BOM - bill of materials - will possibly cost less than you imagine (other than perhaps the enclosure) - but I also think this is less relevant to the price of the object than you think. There are margins to take into account around manufacture, packaging, and shipping, the cost of performing all those actions, and the cost of developing the object. Too often “oh but the parts cost $X, I could make it cheaper!” neglects the idea that anyone anywhere is paid for their labour - not just the labour at the end, of making the final thing, but the labour throughout, of inventing, researching, and designing the thing in the first place.

[artfwo]

How is the performance compared to ”similar” devices, like Organelle? I’ve tried running sc on my Organelle and, honestly, it’s quite easy to hit the ceiling.

Haven’t seen Organelle, but norns is quite powerful. I’ve been doing stuff like building code while simultaneously running a granular synth with several active voices and didn’t get any audible xruns. But yeah, it’s surely possible to hit the ceiling when your patch goes off the rails.

[artfwo]

Lua seems really nice and all, but if i already know sc, would it be possible to do everything in there instead? If not, why?

That will require SuperCollider libraries for the display, knobs and buttons. There is also a lot of logic for peripheral device management in norns, that would be a bit tricky to implement in SC. At the bare minimum, you should have a trivial Lua script to load the engine, which can do a lot of things, but I’d recommend using Lua for all the user interaction and sequencing stuff.

[oscillateur]

I think the BOM - bill of materials - will possibly cost less than you imagine (other than perhaps the enclosure) - but I also think this is less relevant to the price of the object than you think. There are margins to take into account around manufacture, packaging, and shipping, the cost of performing all those actions, and the cost of developing the object. Too often “oh but the parts cost $X, I could make it cheaper!” neglects the idea that anyone anywhere is paid for their labour - not just the labour at the end, of making the final thing, but the labour throughout, of inventing, researching, and designing the thing in the first place.

Yeah, the main cost is human : research, design, programming. It takes highly skilled individuals to produce good hardware or software, and these people deserve something for their work.

[emp]

Ok. But why do we want Lua instead of sclang? More efficient? Easier to learn?

[artfwo]

Ok. But why do we want Lua instead of sclang? More efficient? Easier to learn?

Compared to sclang Lua is very minimal. It’s also a bit weird and fast. In the context of norns though, learning it allows you to use the current and future libraries, scripts and community knowledge.

For learning Lua I also recommend the Learn Lua in 15 Minutes tutorial (aimed for programmers), which is a very comprehensive intro to the language.

[Zedkah]

There is also the scale of the production to consider. ‘more affordable’ means more people will buy it and this may brings unit costs down. The development costs are also less per unit. A bigger community of users also benefits most of us. The announcements sort of hint that this might be the approach. I think this could be a big seller it hits a nice spot - has a screen and is upgradable. If the talk of coding doesnt put too many people off- which it shouldnt as nice stack of community made instruments/apps /things are sitting ready for it. It should be a thing that works for what ever level of coding knowledge you can bring to it: lots or virtually none- it has something to offer to the user.
Im sure a lot of thought has been put into these things.