#1222

It is not possible to sync Orca to an external midi clock. However it is possible to sync through UDP. There is a Max patch on this thread for those who use Ableton Live Suite. I wanted to build a piece of software that could transform any midi clock to udp, but I’m using Orca-C that doesn’t seems to allow any external sync (even udp)…

1 Like
#1223

Anybody know any written tutorials for Orca? Video tutorials drive me nuts, although I get that some of the concepts in Orca might be hard to explain via text / static images alone.

#1224

Have you had a look at this one?

2 Likes
#1225

Nope… that’s perfect, a recipe book was really more what I actually needed. Thanks!

#1226

As I’ve played with Orca over the last week or so I’ve determined it’s very esoteric nature requires creative solutions to problems more easily solved in other programming environment. As a result I end up asking myself “how can I ____?”

Here is a change detector.
D generates a clock that r needs to generate a random number. Choose your interval.
D bangs r, r generates a 0 or a 1 that gets jumped to the F.
O writes the var directly below itself. The value there will always be the value at the second input exactly one frame later. If they are the same the first F will output a bang (usually high)
The last F used with only one input will invert the result of the first F.

....D.
......
...0r2
......
11O.J.
...F..
..F*..
......
3 Likes
#1227

Here is a tutorial on how to build a tracker in ORCA. I am sure many of you experienced ORCA folk may have built a few trackers but anyone just getting started will hopefully find this useful and fun to watch.

14 Likes
Trackers!
#1228


Very cool cellular automata by @l3kn@merveilles.town
13 Likes
#1229

32 channel shift register

9 Likes
#1230

To everyone asking about syncing Orca to external MIDI clock and being told “no” — it’s working :slight_smile: for some of us at least.

It is currently in not one but two unmerged PRs, it would be great to get some more testing and feedback.

Try it: https://github.com/njanssen/Orca/pull/1

See discussion: https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca/pull/240

4 Likes
#1231

Curious about something: when people sync to MIDI clock, do they rely on START to be emitted on the beat or on SPP? The latter is the standard, I believe, but I suspect the former is more popular.

Current Orca sync WIP expects beat-synced START and ignores SPP, just wondering if this is the anarchy the community wants. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#1232

Just trying it, seems to be working fine :smiley:

1 Like
#1233

It’s working great!

I haven’t noticed any drift in the beat so far, my only concern is that when I stop the master clock, in my case from Ableton Live, Orca pauses and it takes a little time and goes back to it’s initial parameters (original bpm, etc), and starts playing again, I think the desired behavior would be that Orca stays paused after receiving a pause signal from the master clock.

I haven’t looked at the code, but I’ll try to understand it and see if I can help :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#1234

Excellent, and thank you for that catch! Fix pushed.

I think so too. I have not needed to stop my master clock in Bitwig, so this went unobserved until you mentioned it. The original behavior was to always resume Orca’s internal clock 2 seconds after losing MIDI clock, the fix adds a condition that Orca must not be paused. :+1:

You already helped! :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#1235

It’s working perfect! :smiley:

Great PR and thanks for adding this feature, it really opens up a lot of possibilities. :clap:

If I found anything else I’ll add it here, but hope this gets merged soon to master.

2 Likes
#1236

I’m hoping to test and merge it this weekend :slight_smile:

9 Likes
#1237

MIDI clock sync is merged, taking a little liberty in announcing that :slight_smile:

I’m profoundly thankful to @neauoire and the rest of the community for a fantastic tool. Working both in and on Orca is a special kind of double joy.

14 Likes
#1238

That’s incredible news! I was waiting for a stable sync in in order to properly blend Orca into the production process! Congrats :slight_smile:

1 Like
#1239

Thank you so much, I will give this a try this weekend :slight_smile:

#1240

Just asking, but is there any plan to make ORCA scrollable at some point, so you could set up whole maps of generators and “walk” to them like in a game (while zoomed in)?

this would be so cool :slight_smile:

1 Like
#1241

No plans for this no, the idea with orca is that it’s a livecoding language that always display where the notes are coming from. The reason for this is that as a member of the audience of livecoding shows, I always felt it was pretty boring when someone scrolled up and down the track’s source, it made it really difficult to understand what was doing what.

Orca is designed with “transarency” in mind, notes should always have some sort of visual feedback.

4 Likes