Approaching: norns

[alspsum]

incredible—thanks! looking forward to the day aux grid enters the picture

[markeats]

cool, great to hear, especially the script management stuff!

[tehn]

That said, I think there’s room for us in the exploration and development of this instrument from the get-go – in fact, I think our perspectives (and especially our challenges) could be important to those doing the coding.

absolutely agree, and my DM with @papernoise was meant to highlight the fact that it’s important not to get too drawn into hype. it’s best to know what a machine will do for you before bringing it in. for some they can see immediately (ie, just want mlr, or know coding and can already think of what they want to make).

it’s totally legit to just want mlr. (on some level, that’s me).

just trying to encourage people to take your time. i promise these won’t be discontinued suddenly.

[vals]

the thread is on fire…
a couple of moments before…

[Oneven]

Absolutely agree. My GAS is telling me I need one, but with my limited knowledge of the inner workings my feedback would be nihil.

I would be more a “consumer” of other people’s code, as I have been with the teletype so far. Maybe the first 100 will go quickly and I hope that they get bought by people who will build the norns ecosystem and make it just as amazing and varied as the grid ecosystem.

[Oneven]

Curious to see how w/ is going to fit into the larger picture. Crow looks beautiful.

[Jonny]

just trying to encourage people to take your time. i promise these won’t be discontinued suddenly.

really appreciate the calming of the frenzy, especially for those of us who want to evaluate slowly.

[papernoise]

I’ve been pondering many of the same questions over the last week (in a kind of agonizing way), and I’m generally in a very similar position to yours (especially in terms of coding experience). That said, I think there’s room for us in the exploration and development of this instrument from the get-go – in fact, I think our perspectives (and especially our challenges) could be important to those doing the coding.

@tehn said it already (much better than I did), but let me second what he said. There’s room for all sorts of people in norns. It’s been stated before that the scripting isn’t that hard to get into. Never tried LUA but it doesn’t seem daunting. Also – something I wanted to say earlier but didn’t get to – it’s geat that they decided to divide the engines from the interface. I don’t know it I’ll ever get into supercollider, I probably won’t. One life itsn’t enough to do everything. But I am confident that I can get into LUA enough to get norns to do all I want it to do. But as Brian said, it’s important to know what the machine will do before bringing it in and that’s just what I want to do. I don’t buy gear to sell it two weeks after, usually when I buy something it sticks, because I make sure to have understood it enough to be able to decide if it will be the right thing or not (which doesn’t mean I don’t make errors of course). I mean… it took me years to get a teletype, but I know that module will stay there for quite a long time.

I’m very excited to see how this will unfold! It’s been said quite often, but let me say it one more time. Exiting times to make electronic music!

[scanner_darkly]

saying that norns replaces tt is a bit like saying laptop replaces norns

different workflows. also i wouldn’t underestimate the fact that tt is still quite possibly the most powerful utility eurorack module. need a clock divider? easy. but then you think “what if i control division with chaos…” this immediacy factor should not be underestimated either.

they present 2 different ecosystem, and what’s beautiful - 2 ecosystems that can interact.

[jasonw22]

also i wouldn’t underestimate the fact that tt is still quite possibly the most powerful utility eurorack module. need a clock divider? easy. but then you think “what if i control division with chaos…” this immediacy factor should not be underestimated either.

This is a really good point. Norns in many ways frees TT to focus on these utilities. Leave the stuff that was pushing at the edges of TT capability to norns.

[saeflod]

yeah I think the coding aspect of norns is getting overblown.

Yes, it runs code. And you can script it very easily compared to the other stuff (save perhaps Teletype, which I don’t have). This is exciting.

But for me, it is first and foremost a beautiful little box that will be many different musical instruments, according to your taste and interest, with no need for coding.

I am a coder. But I am more excited for norns to run other people’s code than my own. And I am most excited to hear the music people make with it, coders and non-coders alike.

[carltesta]

Would writing an alt-firmware mean changing a startup script so that it would choose a different audio device at startup? Or does it mean writing a whole new audio driver for the OS?

[alspsum]

ok so maybe i have a couple more

is it possible to record from a supercollider patch straight into mlr, or do you have to record to disk first and then load into mlr from there?

does it have the classic mlr effects, and if so, are they mappable to tilt controls?

can loops recorded on the fly be saved to disk independently of sets?

last one, promise—can existing audio files be loaded into mlr directly from an external drive, or do they need to be copied onto the internal memory first?

[loma]

some non-grid auto-mlr-ish sample proccesor

I’m interested in learning more about how the non-grid mrl will work. I unfortunately no longer have a grid (a bit of seller’s remorse), but a sample processor along the lines of mlr plus the asynchronous loopers and granulator would be enough for me to dive in on this device.

If it’s more or less a simple task to MIDI assign some of the basic functions to a simple MIDI controller (say a Faderfox UC4), I’m all in.

[hypnosapien]

Perhaps I’ve missed this info in the thread, but how would one go about syncing norns with, say, white whale or anisble? I’m sure crows could accomplish this, but without crows, would a modular midi/cv interface be required? For example, to record a perfect loop from a drum pattern driven by ww…

[Olivier]

Very eloquently put - thanks for elaborating!

[zzsnzmn]

For someone who is kinda broke-ish right now, is it possible to run a subset of norns code on a linux laptop? I saw @zebra mention that it mostly works, if so do you know when you’ll release info on setting up a low-level-ish linux environment that’s compatible with the SC/lua code?

[Ravel]

Very simples question here… Does norns allow for ‘hot-swapping’ a grid between it and say an earthsea eurorack module?

How to sync up to the rest of my euro, looks to be an important question too.

I would be on the non-coder end of the spectrum and have been looking for a sampler replacement for my octatrack (long since gone, too inelegant). MLR looks the business to me. The art of a good interface is that performing on the thing seems to looks fairly intuitive.

[EagleEyedTiger]

Well, I’m excited for tomorrow. Good luck to everyone trying to get in on the preorder fun.

The end of May is going to be fun with this and Thermae.

[Dewb]

On top of all the already-mentioned excellent use cases, norns looks like it could be very useful for artists doing interactive sound installations, especially if there’s a straightforward way to develop a piece on norns and then deploy it into a standard Pi+soundcard for the installation. Possibly coupled with an LZX Andor1 for A/V installations…