#41

so i realized there was no reason why Orca wouldn’t work with grids as well, had some time today and now it supports both! the cool thing is you can hotswap them at any time. i had to make some changes to make it work (mostly parameter ranges and some other things needed due to the fact you have more control when using it with a grid).

i’ve updated the OP with the link to the new release (v1.2), need to completely redo the manual, but should have a tutorial video in a bit. in the meantime a teaser:

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#42

here is a video tutorial that should cover 90% of the functionality, i’ll do a proper manual soon. for folks that are upgrading - there was a number of tweaks made which will change things a bit, divisors are now controlled by encoder #1, and phase is #2. you’ll lose whatever preset you currently have in flash when upgrading to this. arc2 still supported, but grid-wise mostly done for varibright grid 128, not sure how / if it will work on other grids.

big thanks to monome for making it open source which really made it very doable.

5 Likes
#43

you are on fire. thanks for sharing! will be testing with a monobrightness by the end of the week and report back…

wait a minute. how about using both grid and arc via a usb hub? did you try? (does that even make sense technically?)

#44

monobright should work in theory, and VB doesn’t play a big role here really, let me know how it works.

re: usb hub - no, that won’t work unfortunately. there was a thread on the old forum discussing this in details, but basically as i understand it there is no code to support usb host functionality for hubs running on avr32, which is what you need. hopefully it will be possible eventually.

what would work reasonably well is an opposite of Switch - same idea but instead of being able to switch 1 device between 2 hosts it would let you switch between 2 devices. i wonder if there is something like that already…

#45

thanks for the clarification!

I’ve actually seen that thread. but I thought it was more about adressing different ports individually, and I imagined this situation to be just broadcasting to several devices… then again I really just understood half of the stuff in there, so might have another look.

edit: my statement above confirmed to be not true. no hub support.

#46

wow, @scanner_darkly, that might actually compel me to get a second white whale. will test it on my current one first. great job, and excellent overview video. thanks for sharing!

1 Like
#47

I am having these thoughts also… @myecholalia :grinning::mega::moneybag::eyes::notes::arrows_clockwise:

#48

thanks guys!

came up with a good way to edit scales and somehow ended up making all 16 scales fully editable with a 3 octave range, all can be stored in flash memory. coding is done, but i want to test it a bit more, will post the new version tomorrow!

edit: incidentally, the scale editing mode also makes it much more clear how notes are selected!

#49

Cool grid mod! YES :+1:

#50

pwm would be totally possible! the current software timer resolution is 1ms, so not great for pwm audio. but you could easily implement a higher-resolution and more efficient timer structure-- (ie, array of fixed timers instead of the fancy linked list). unfortunately the pins attached to the jacks are not pins with hardware PWM, which would make this exercise trivial.

the bottleneck with the DAC would be SPI, but also whatever calculation you were doing (DSP loop) which includes pushing memory around. at any reasonable resolution this would take a lot of processing.

#51

thanks @tehn, this clarifies things! got a couple more questions, i’ll use the firmware mod thread as it seems a more appropriate place.

#52

new release v1.3 is ready - now you can edit all 16 scales, and they can be saved to flash memory!
new release is here: https://github.com/scanner-darkly/monome-mods/releases/tag/v1.3
now i just need to do a proper manual - will hopefully have something much better than the old one end of this week.

[okl, i still want to think about how to capture loops in a way that would preserve them better but that can wait]

video tutorial for scale editing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvoNrqSKrSs

#53

edit: removed outdated diagrams - new proper manual is available now.

2 Likes
#54

forgot to mention - v1.3 also fixed a bug where a small chance was still applied even when set to 0 (i was wondering why it would still add variations every now and then…)

#55

It’s been a while since I promised to do a proper manual and I finally have a good excuse for the delay - as I was writing it I kept thinking of all the new features I should add, and there is no point in writing about something that keeps changing!

I’ve reached the point however where I can draw the line and happily call this Orca v2. That’s quite a version jump, but justified imho by all the stuff that was added. Here is a shortened list:

  • a lot more ways to mutate the sequence, including randomization, and rotate/mutate sequencers
  • triggers are much more configurable and interesting to use now
  • global reset
  • presets! you can now save everything to one of the 16 presets, and each preset includes 16 scales, fully editable, and all 16 presets can be stored to flash

I do want to add that just as much work as went into the above list was spent on multiple usability tweaks, making everything work intuitively. And in the process it somehow became not just an automatic melody generator (although it’s great at that) but also, surprisingly enough, a great performance tool. Partially due to reworked algorithm which recalculates counters whenever you change parameters, so everything keeps running smoothly no matter how much you tweak it.

Off to much needed sleep, but this time there are demo and tutorial videos and a proper manual (which has the links to the videos and the release): https://github.com/scanner-darkly/monome-mods/wiki/Orca

And here is a preview of what’s new in v2. Hope you like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN6kVYBCYVU

3 Likes
#56

i’m getting an extra white whale just to run this!!! THANK YOU!!!

#57

Again: Amazing work!

So, has Orca become a grid project in the end? Or are all the features implemented on Arc as well?

#58

it would be difficult to provide the same editing capabilities on arc. having said that i would never drop arc support from Orca, i mean it’s in the name!

at this point i would say i view it as something you would use with both. i wanted to make sure that switching between the two is as smooth as possible, you can swap them at any point without interruption, you can change things with arc and continue fine tuning them with grid.

a typical scenario would be using grid to set things up and then connect arc to do variations while using the grid with MP or another WW. a couple of things i’m thinking of adding to provide better support for this would be:

  • use grid to define the arc presets
  • instead of tying up an encoder to control chance use it instead to select from grid presets, so then you set it up with grid and use arc to select between presets and add variations.
#59

That sounds like a good plan!
(I am yet to run Orca, partly because I think I will need to get a second WW for it.)

#60

Wow! Wow! Wow! Brilliant! Just by looking at the videos and the manual this is just awesome. The work and attention that went into this free alternative freeware is just staggering. I’m so happy I stumbled into the monomeverse!!!