#23

My grid and arc arrived yesterday. Because I had an arc with push button knobs years ago I assumed that it’s still that way, so I was a little disappointed to notice that the wheels don’t work as push buttons anymore. When and why did that happen – and how do you think and feel about this change?

Also the knobs are pretty stiff now. If any of you tuned arc to make it a little more loose: Could you please advice me how to do that?

#24

The change happened with the new iteration built within the grid like aluminium enclosure two years ago. As far as I understood, Brian was not satisfied by the existing push-encoder options on the market.

I have no experience with the original Arc but my feeling is that the push encoders are missing. You have push on something to switch between modes, states, pages or anything again and again and doing this either on the computer or on the small Ansible buttons (which then have long/short press gestures, because there are just two of them), takes away some of the magic from playing Arc and Grid as instrument interfaces. Watching the old push-button videos always seemed like a more organic workflow to me.

Then, I don’t have norns yet but I imagine it would feel different to me in this regard as I have a feeling that grid, arc and norns would build a functional unit again - with the modular or the computer arc somehow does not so much (while grid does).

Maybe it’s the aesthetic minimalism and and functional focus I imagine the new monome trinity will provide someday (On a side note, while seeing its usefulness I am also not very excited about crow to connect norns to the modular because the concept would then again lose this focus for me).

#25

if you refer to push encoders, small correction. the 2012 editions arc2 and arc4 already didn’t have push (but also superior encoders than the original if I recall correctly).

but I totally agree that norns is a very good friend to cover some kind of push turn interaction. my arc2 had a great resurrection since 2.0. the arc encs specially feel great to scrub audio buffers, and I can easily justify it being there just for angle alone. but then I can’t help but still see so much potential with arcs, and given how relatively easy it is to write scripts for norns… great times ahead!

2 Likes
#26

Thanks for your in depth replies, @Leverkusen and @sakul! I have to explore what the current arc can do in combination with grid, but I agree that the button less arc seems like a pretty big step backwards in terms of organic workflow and flexibility when using it with a computer or modular.

On push button arcs the poti axis was less firm than on the current ones, so the wheels tilted a tiny bit when applying pressure to the edge of a wheel. I can see why Brian wasn’t entirely satifsfied with that quality – but personally I’d rather accept this compromise than give up the button functionality.

I don’t know yet if I’ll take the Norns or Ansible or computer->Max-> CV route, so I’ll wait until we know what Crow brings to the table.

2 Likes
#27

Ups, you are absolutely right of course!

Scrubbing audio in a sampler is what I am dreaming of since I have the Arc. Unfortunately I did not find a way to do it with in the modular by now and did not find a used norns that I can afford.

I was always hoping for an Ansible app that outputs something like acceleration or speed values of the encoders. One could patch it like an endless encoder then and scrub through recordings within the ER-301…

Gate on/off for encoder movement detection
CV for speed of encoder movement

:heart_eyes:

#28

from old threads about this change…

1 Like
#29

That’s why I’m waiting for Crow. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#30

These are both very helpful, thanks. Making a clock on an arc came up as a fun demo in a conversation while I was hacking yesterday.

3 Likes
#31

I made a little Norns library that lets you register Norns parameters to work with your scripts, so it “Arc-ifies” most Norns apps with a few lines of code.

This is still a little unpolished, I’ll probably clean it up and give it a better name for the official Norns release:

22 Likes
#32

Great! This is my next challenge. Was looking for details on how to work with the arc – this may offer a glimpse.

1 Like
#33

Not sure where to post this…

Just got my new arc4 yesterday. I have an Ansible and Max/M4L. And a recent grid128.

Any suggestions as to where to start with arc?

Thanks!

3 Likes
#34

in M4L, I really like Arc Control (there might be two? one with LFOs, one that’s just knobs) from @stretta’s GridLab. It’s pretty simple, but very useful.

Both the Arc Ansible apps seem really fun. A bit more of a learning curve, but more fully-featured with more to explore.

3 Likes
#35

Start with @stretta gridlab for eaxample. You’ll enjoy M4L apps like the Arc Rhythm Generator, Electric Dharma Wheels or Arclab Chrods:

Here’s the github link:

8 Likes
#36

Maybe a stupid question but does it matter which side of the arc, or the grid for that matter, the USB port is on?

With grid, when I plug it into Ansible, it works well with the USB port on the left side…

Thanks!

#37

The “clarck” app is a good example of one where the reason it matters is immediately obvious. Because if you get it wrong, tour clock’s upside down. And with any app, the encoders would be ordered backwards (with 0 on the right and 3 on the left).

It will not reverse which directions you rotate each encoder to increase or decrease a value, however. So, in many cases, you might not notice the difference.

1 Like
#38

I’d love to add an orientation option because having the cable coming out the left side of my arc is annoying in my current setup. Something I’ll look in to this summer.

2 Likes
#39

/sys/rotation i <degrees>
rotate the monome by degrees, where degrees is one of 0, 90, 180, 270.

I don’t know if this works with arcs, but could be worth a shot!

#40

grid rotation is in the norns code, but I don’t think it’s exposed to the user via a menu option just yet.

arc code does not have rotation just yet.

1 Like
#41

I’ll take a look at what it would take to add arc rotation in the next couple weeks. I had a prototype working in the arcify library but it’s something that belongs in the core libs.

#42

FWIW - I did the grid rotation code and could probably add arc rotation pretty quickly. What’s taken a long time has been getting some UI for it added to menu.lua

2 Likes