Norns 2.0 is excellent so far. I finally have a working wifi setup along with a lot more storage space.
I think a major point of friction on Norns at the moment is sample management, especially for the sketches with more than one sample file. Here’s the process:
- Exit the PLAY view and go to the EDIT view
- Dial over to the parameters page
- Dial down to the first sample file parameter
- Transition to the file dialog, find your sample.
- After selecting the file, scroll down to the next sample slot in a fairly fiddly manner (depending on how the params page is organized)
- Transition back to the file dialog, where you are reset to the top (!) of the tree.
- repeat, repeat, repeat
While you can then save this as a pset file, you then have to do this over and over again for each sketch.
Here are some generalized ideas based on how other gear handles this.
Sample Pool
Elektron boxes, ER-301, and Assimil8or to an extent have this, with ER-301 being an especially relevant example about how to pull this off with a minimal interface. The Assimil8or is the simplest: pick a sample folder and the whole thing gets loaded (unless there’s not enough RAM, in which case it just loads whatever it can into the pool). On Elektron boxes and the ER-301, you can either load one file at a time (like Norns), or select multiple files to load into the pool. In the latter case, while scrolling through the file list, you can press an alternate button to mark the file for loading. You then press the other buttons to commit the files to the pool.
With an active pool, the parameter page on Norns could avoid the file loading dialog altogether. Instead, you could scroll to a sample slot, and then rotate quickly through files 1, 2, 3… etc. This is even better for those of us who would want to map this to MIDI so that we can change samples mid-performance.
(EDIT: I imagine the sample pool would be another tab in the EDIT mode set. It would persist between sketches but would be flushed on Sleep. Additionally, there would be options to save/load/clear the entire pool)
Sample Kits
This is another option on Elektron boxes. You can pick a pre-mapped kit that will assign 8 samples (on the Digitakt), one onto each specific track. I’m imagining a way where we could create Norns kits, then loading a kit will add the kit’s samples to a pool in sequential order (Perhaps a kit could be saved from a pool…?).
Using this method, I could create an 8-sample kit in Glut, go over to Playfair, and load the same kit into the active pool, thus auto-filling the 8 param slots on Playfair.
