#502

May be a strange request but would anyone have the time or want to do a FT tutorial with me to get started with programming? I’ve tried (very unsuccessful) to do the tutorials and I can’t even seem to get started… I’ve tried to do the SineTest over and over but nothing and I think its something silly I’m missing…

I find that I learn better seeing things done compared to just reading about it…

I could pay for some FT training if someone was willing…

Many thanks…

*Edit … Just wanted to thank @JaggedNZ for helping me out via FT… got me started on the path of programming…

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#503

I’ve been thinking recently about a potential Softcut based script set up much like @its_your_bedtime beautiful Reels script:

Basically, I believe it would be awesome to use an unused Softcut buffer for SP-404 (or OP-Z style) performance punch in effects/EQ.

Basically, an ever buffering Softcut would record incoming signals and the effects would be capable of being applied via midi, grid or arc control. Parameters such as EQ filters, beat repeat timing and such would be able to be altered via Midi knobs and sliders through midi learn (16n and twister fighter come to mind) and pad or key based instruments could activate these effects (again, similar to the instruments of inspiration).

This could add a lot of fun to Awake, FoulPlay and any other apps, or stand alone as it’s own effects pass through box. Heck, I’d even love to siphon off a single live buffer from Cheat Codes and go nuts!

Some punch in style effects;
Beat repeats
Low quality tape causing erratic slew,
EQ presets to be jumped to
Pitch up and down
mimeophoe style Halo Effect or delay
Morphagene style gene pitch randomness

I could go on!

Interestingly, since it wouldn’t have to have a dedicated screen, run on Softcut and would be midi controlled/param based, it could have an easily abstracted portion of the script that could be dropped on top of others. Any thoughts on either feasibility or better yet, interest from someone to work together with my sadly zero programming knowledge to build something like this?

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#504

Hi all-

I have recently started using midi to modulate a few of my favorite stomp boxes (namely, Chase Bliss stuff). My favorite tool for doing this is Logic Pro’s “modulator” midi tool. It essentially lets you pick a destination for an LFO and then send those values out as midi messages.

But, I need a way to do this without a laptop.

Having just built a DIY norns, I’m wondering if perhaps using @Justmat’s hnds lfo’s to generate midi control change messages would be super hard, or super easy. I know this is a very specific topic, but I’m not sure where else to ask. Thanks!

I’ll try to make a quick little video explaining what I want to do later today.

2 Likes
#505

It would be really simple to send midi cc’s with hnds :slight_smile: If I have some time today, I’ll whip up an example.

6 Likes
#506

20 chars of you are my hero, Mat. :grin:

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#507

Hey! Just had this idea for the Norns app, but I am not competent enough in coding to make it a reality so I will just leave it here and perhaps someone might get inspired or know how to implement it.

4 Channel real-time event extractor from live audio:
Norns acts as a processor for incomming audio and outputs either midi trigs or trigger into crow in real time based on the signal chain:

  1. The signal chain has 4 independent and identical parts / channels working in parallel configuration, so I will just explain a single channel.

  2. Incomming audio into Norns gets fed into a bandpass filter (very narrow one and with adjustable frequency parameter), then into an envelope follower --> slew (to make the curve smoother) --> comparator with adjustable threshold level and finally we get a trigger / gate out to either midi out or crow out 1 whenever band’s envelope follower reaches the threshold level. In the end we get 4 independent signal chains like described above that feed off original audio signal in parallel configuration.

  3. The above signal chain allows one to feed any audio signal and extract patterns from it in real time (latency should be as low as possible). This is cool because you can capture patterns from non clock based performances and so on. You can even make some pattern on external devices, then resample them and then feed this resampled audio to extract new patterns (pattern resampling).

  4. Using ARC we can set frequency values for 4 band pass filters, pressing ALT key on norns 4 ARC encoders could switch their functionality to adjust threshold levels for each channel.

  5. Crow outputs 1-4 could be used to output 4 trigger / gate events into the modular.

  6. Norns could output these 4 trigger/gates on either 4 separate midi channels or on 1 channel (poly like mode).

Advanced features:

  1. Creating pattern chains that store 4 frequency values for band pass filters.
  2. Saving presets of all parameters, useful if you are dealing with specific audio signals like different drum kits etc.

Looking forward to hear what you think, would really open up Norns for live improvisation even more. Would love to try this with drummers or general weird audio sources.

4 Likes
#508

fwiw, you could probably implement this in ableton and output to crow without any coding

(I might even prefer ableton to supercollider in this case since signal chains are much easier to modify there)

1 Like
#509

What would you use in Ableton to get the comparator thing outputting midi? There is a max for live envelope follower but it doesn’t output any triggers

#510

This is a mundane question: is there a relatively simple pedal-style looper for Norns?

I’m mainly wanting to use external midi controllers (a foot controller, specifically) to record, play, overdub loops similar to the vast array of pedals out there. One caveat, implementing an exclusivity matrix in Norns so you can A/B parts (one button stops one loop and starts recording/play of another loop).

This is easily build in Ableton but seems like Norns could accomplish this more elegantly and provide visual feedback, as well as a tactile interface, via Grid or Arc.

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#511

speakin slightly outside of my knowledge base (no crow) but maybe check out the crow m4l devices ?

maybe ^^outs handle it but if not it seems like less of a task to develop a m4l crow device for this part of the signal chain rather a supercollider engine for everything.

not to limit ambitions tho - an analysis engine for norns wld be pretty cool

1 Like
#512

check out the softcut studies for an illustration of how this could be done. super possible!

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#513

I’m building this right now + I believe next update will include midi-mappable toggle params

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#514

kinda want to get some feedback on an idea

I’m imagining a wavetable synth engine that’s focused on crossfading single cycle waveforms from other hardware synths or instruments collected in a community repo.

on paper it sounds cool but I’m curious how successful it would be - i.e. how much of the useful character of a synth will remain in a single cycle + will there be sample rate or interpolation related issues down the line

has anything like this been done before ?

#515

interpolating and crossfaded wavetable synth in SC is pretty basic for the naive implementation.

Osc ugen uses a wavetable. VOsc crossfades between multiple wavetables. look at the helpfiles because there is some oddness to the buffer format which these ugens expect: the format contains alternating position/delta pairs in the buffer data, instead of just positions. Signal.asWavetable will perform this conversion.

reason i say “naive” is that these objects don’t do anything to prevent aliasing. that’s more complicated. you would need to use multisampling: create multiple versions of the wavetable, each one lowpassed to a different octave or half-octave or whatever, then select one based on playback rate.

this kind of lowpass is best implemented by taking FFT, applying brickwall, taking IFFT. this can be done in supercollider but i’d recommend just making a little command line utility using your tools of choice. (mine would be c/c++, libsndfile, and kissft, but you could easily use python or something.)

nigel redmon made a good series explaining multisampling for wavetable oscs:
https://www.earlevel.com/main/category/digital-audio/oscillators/wavetable-oscillators/

to your question, it’s been done many times and it could be useful. i do think a lot of chatacter inheres in waveshape, and a lot doesn’t. see further up in this very thread for links to existing SC projects and probably some version of what i just wrote.

3 Likes
#516

cool, I watched the Eli Fieldsteel tutorial on wavetable stuff which is pretty darn good, just didn’t go over using pre-recorded samples this way which is why I was curious. sounds like I should just go for it.

I may even enjoy the naive flavor given personal low fidelity leanings, but we’ll see !

1 Like
#517

i guess i should point out the other main limitation of Osc family ugens, which is that they require a buffer size of 2^N and IIRC will not gracefully deal with changing buffer size on the fly.

so i really would recommend making some kind of sample preparation utility; if nothing else it should resample to a fixed table size.

#518

makes sense - I also can’t think of an easy tool for cutting samples at zero-crossings

anyone want to chime in and share a fav wavetable synth model ? considering options for amount of samples to crossfade, envelopes, etc - never actually played with wavetables much myself

#519

i don’t know what that means. when i say “crossfade” i mean interpolating between two different wavetables, in addition to interpolating within the wavetable, e.g. “2D” or “wave terrain”

#520

yep, I meant wavetables ! was thinkin’ about 2d vs 3d

#521

3d seems like a bit much. expensive with unclear benefit, since you can dynamically assign the buffers pointed to in VOsc anyways.

so i’d start with 2d. if you want to expand the possibilities of that, add a synchronous oscillator that affects the crossfade between tables. changing the shape of this xfade oscillator will change the waveform. this is basically what is called “wave terrain synthesis” (where the xfade oscillator is called the “orbit.”)

@andrew i can whip up a utility for (1) loading soundfile, (2) choppping begin and/or end to zero-x, (3) resampling to fixed size, (4) outputting (optionally in SC wavetable format.) this is simple and i can probably do it today. i think it’s best to implement all of that in one utiltity in c/c++, because of (1) portability and (2) efficiency. if you add a brickwall filter for multisampling, then this is something i’ve been meaning to release for a while.

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