#494

there are so many input modes might be worth brainstorming how best to implement

msg me here or on gh if you wanna work together…otherwise i might chip away at it whenever i have time

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#495

This is a total Newby question – I am playing with ORCA both on my Norns and my laptop but I can’t get any sound – the output is midi and I think I need to map midi to my system output but I haven’t figured out how to do it. Any suggestions?

#496

hey there, are you using a midi interface? does your midi interface show up in the HID device list on Norns?

#497

Not using a midi interface - just the analog out on my norns-shield and the speakers on my Mac. I think you can map midi out on the Mac but I’m not not sure about the Norns

#498

your mac has a built in virtual midi device called iac driver, which you can activate in the audio midi setup app (located in applications/utilities/). then you have to chose an iac port to send on from orca, and then some software synth on your computer to receive the midi signals on the same iac port and midi channel – most likely hosted in a daw, but could also be supercollider or vcv rack or some other software that reads midi and produces sound.

you could also use pilot, a software synth which is triggered via udp and not midi (uses the ; command in orca, rather than the : midi one)
gull is a udp sampler.

if you want to trigger external sounds via midi from orca on norns, you need a midi interface and connect the norns and external device with a midi cable. orca norns can also make use of several sound engines, so that you can make sounds internally.

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#499

The v1.4+ of Norns Orca (available within Maiden) allows for the activation of different sound engines to create sound using the | param.

Please note; the Norns Orca port has unique operators — not part of other Orca versions — for generating sounds using Norns synth engines and controlling devices such as Crow.

Please refer to the documentation for more information on params options and I highly recommend looking at the included (within this recent version Norns Orca) demos and tutorials to understand fundamental functionality.

Here’s a quick guide to using the PolyPerc engine with Norns Orca.

  1. Once you’ve started Orca, press K1 and navigate to the EDIT menu.

2-1589411611

  1. Scroll to ENGINE and select Activate PolyPerc engine.

orca-activate-polyperc

  1. Now you can generate tones using the synth | operator. Here’s a basic routine that will iterate through 4 notes C4, B4, G4, and A4 on every beat.
......................
......D1.1I4..........
..411G*...14TCBGA.....
.........*|4C.........
......................

For more advanced usage, different parameters of the engine are manipulated using the synth param - operator. Note different engines have different parameter options.

To do the above using only Midi, you can skip the Activate PolyPerc engine step and modify the above sketch to use the : Midi operator. However, as noted you’ll need to make sure you have a real or virtual device connected to you Norns. The routine changes to the following and will send Midi note on messages to channel 1. Refer to the Basics tutorial for more.

......................
......D1..1I4..........
..411G*....14TCBGA.....
.........*:14C.........
......................
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#500

This is thorough work and builds incredible potential. Special thanks for the guides & docs.

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#501

sorry, maybe I’m missing something, but it seems like the timber engine’s level and position slots don’t do anything for me? e.g. |5C20. and |5C2z. sound the exact same. am I missing something simple?

#502

@glia Thanks for this. Can folks with an Arc confirm functionality?

#504

i saw this too, see above, @Frederickk’s on it!

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#505

been using orca on norns (shield) with great delight all day, until it crashed just recently. now i can’t get it running again. i can load other scripts fine, but norns freezes on the orca “loading…” screen and disconnects me from matron whenever i try to load it. the only thing i can do is a hardware reset. where do i find the matron log after being disconnected from matron? i’ve tried restart and sleep but it doesn’t help.

the last line sc gives me is: WARNING: SynthDef synthVoice too big for sending. Retrying via synthdef file
any clues?

#506

Hmm… that’s an interesting error. I haven’t seen that one before. Which engine were you using? What are the steps I could take to try and reproduce the error?

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#507

i was using passersby. can’t really tell the exact steps, it was at the end of a long session. i was playing with 4-5 polyphony, passersby only (no midi or otherwise) and changing a lot of synth parameters back and forth. i’ll try re-installing orca and see if that solves the problem. right now norns freezes everytime i load orca : )

#508

This could be an issue with the Passersby engine. @swhic was having nearly the same issue, albeit not with Orca. I wonder if @markeats has seen this before?

I’ll keep looking around to in the Orca codebase and also try to replicate the error myself. Let me know if you get the issue again, and/or with another engine.

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#509

FWIW, that warning isn’t normally an issue

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#510

I’ve noticed the same issue for the Timber engine, something up with the level and position parameters. In particular, when you go into the Edit menu, the Level parameter seems to be stuck at -4.0dB? If I tweak it sometimes I can get it to change, but it snaps back there weirdly.

Otherwise loving the Norns version of Orca! In addition to access to a bunch of great onboard synths and samplers - and softcut! - I really think the Norns-only operators are very powerful - cc in, grid, and crow for cv!

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#511

here’s a thing, with the random operator on DevOrca, you have the ability to specify a range but currently inputting capital letters (whole notes) creates havoc as R tries to use them as operators. it seems like maybe this might be useful in some instances, but since some operators, like the midi op, will take whatever you throw at it and convert a capital letter to its note equivalent, maybe it’s inconsistent? I feel like there’s an idealogical line there to be crossed where some operators pass operators and some don’t.

#512

Sorry not really enough to go on here – if you can repro then let me know and I can take a look.

#513

hopefully posting these DevOrca irregularities here is ok. LMK if somewhere else is better.

this is an example with C cycling T, I am trying to get even sequential movement through the T. you can see that given a upper boundary of 4, it spends the 0 and 1 at the first position and then only gets to the third position. given an upper boundary of 5, it gets to the fourth position but still spends the 0 and 1 at the first position, making for an uneven count.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CJKwpvaFXmy/?igshid=1qs3qh6sgclaq

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#514

i’m on deep waters here, but i think it’s related to what was addressed in the main orca thread concerning norns version counting from 1 rather than 0. this supposedly have been fixed in the new 1.4+ version, but i also experienced the same issue even in the newest version…

i looked up the code mentioned in the linked post above (row 14 in dust/code/orca/lib/library/c.lua), and the “+ 1” wasn’t there. i added it, slept norns and loaded orca – same behaviour. removed “+ 1” again, slept norns and reloaded orca – then it worked the way i wanted to all of a sudden! no idea exactly why, but you could give it a spin.

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