#153

Need to look at the R engine which is supposed to be modular.

Aside from that I don’t think there’s currently a way to have multiple engines available at once.

3 Likes
#154

no, only one engine instantiated at once. the engine command methods are static and they are rebuilt when an engine is loaded.

this is kinda a limitation by design. if engines were modular they would be called “modules” :slight_smile:

(e.g., issue with controlling CPU usage for multiple polyphonic things, no plumbing for routing, commnand list is monolithic.)

that said: you can in fact get a list of available engines and hot-swap them within a script.

it’s also a pretty straightforward exercise to make an engine that wraps multiple engines.

4 Likes
#155

If you made an example of this I would implement it to orca. :heart:

Requirements

  • Polls for available engine and makes them available in lua space.
  • Have a method that changes from one engine to the next.
2 Likes
#156

engine.names

currently, engines are supercollider classes. the list of available engines is never changed except by adding SC clasess and restarting sclang process. (i.e., rebooting norns)

function engineLoadedCallback() 
   engine.list_commands()
end

engine.load('EngineName', engineLoadedCallback)
4 Likes
#157

Seriously?! That is amazing, I had no clue it was already present. And I’ve looked!

I will make an example tutorial, because this is… this could be huge for norns.

— And then I will implement to orca.

13 Likes
#158

That’s exciting! The primary limitation is how to communicate with the engines, as there is no norns-wide standard for what types of messages an engine should expect. So, a synth focused engine might have “pitch” while a sampler might have “speed,” even though they’re roughly the same parameter that you would want to target from the governing Lua script.

It might make the most sense to have multiple Orca-customized engines with standardized parameters. These could be existing engines but ported to the Orca repo and renamed (which is critical! You’ll get tons of bugs/failures/hair loss if you have two engines with the same name on your norns after rebooting). Then, Orca doesn’t need to search. Instead, it can have the list baked in.

2 Likes
Norns: tutorial
#159

I saw a lot of engines had the .hz() method for example, so I could maintain a list of interesting engines that are supported in Orca and that might even begin to steer the community to create standards-compliant engines.

4 Likes
#160

I don’t understand how this softcut operator works, I’ve tried everything written in this thread and am still not getting sound out of it. Anyone know what’s the deal?

#161

There’s some (slightly-old) discussion and proposals for this here: https://github.com/monome/dust/issues/166

1 Like
#162

Try the following as a basic first step:

.D.......
.*/1V1...

Remember that the softcut op needs to be banged (hence the presence of D here, as an example). Though it can take 6 inputs, I’m just using the first 3 to get recording going here:

1: selects the first playhead
V: sets the rec level (0 - Z)
1: sets the rec direction to forward

4 Likes
#163

hey guys!

trying out Orca for the first time and i can’t seem to even get started.

script is loaded.
loaded a couple of samples.
bought a new little Macally PC/Mac keyboard and Orca won’t do anything.

the @ symbol on screen on norns will move around using E2 and E3 but it will not respond to any key input from the computer keyboard.

also…
attempted to LOAD FOLDER in Orca and no samples load.

am i missing something here?

#164

If I recall, I had to configure something in System>Devices for the USB keyboard? Sorry, not at norns.

1 Like
#165

i looked for that earlier and noticed norns sees the keyboard under HID Devices.

#166

i just reset norns again and now Orca is reacting to the computer keyboard!
:expressionless:

let’s see if i can make noiz now…

5 Likes
#167

updated markeats` timber and i think it breaks timber in orca. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
#168

so…
Orca is neato but…i still can’t get it to load a folder.

when trying to load one…it opens my audio folder and then it will open the folder of samples, highlights the first sample and after hitting the button it just jumps back to the parameters display,

no samples loaded.

i can load one sample at a time in each of the parameter sample slots.

any suggestions?

#169

Sorry if I missed this in the thread; I did search but haven’t come up with anything.

I’ve been using and loving desktop Orca for a couple of weeks now. Still very much learning as I go, so I’ve found the help text that shows up in the commander when hovering over Op arguments to be helpful.

Has there been any talk about implementing this on the norns version? I would understand why it wouldn’t make sense to show all the time, given screen real estate, but could it be shown when holding a key or something?

I’d be happy to take a stab at implementing potentially. Just wanted to see if there was interest.

2 Likes
#170

Something like a ‘Show Help’ param would be nice, and utilize the bottom line to display help on hover.

4 Likes
#171

I submitted a pull request to get timber beta 4 working with orca, but until it gets approved you can try a small edit on line 22 in orca/lib/library/_timber.lua to:

engine.noteOn( sample, self:note_freq(n), 100, sample )

Things work after that for me, but I haven’t checked things that thoroughly.

#172

Velocity for Timber noteOn should be 0-1 range btw