Orca

[kasselvania]

My pleasure! Might I suggest once you have this figured out digging in to the Softcut operand. It is truly the gooey center of this awesome implementation. Truly sets this apart from other versions. Plan to try, as soon as possible, to try putting some Mangrove drones through the norns and playing with the Softcut buffer. Very cool.

For an example of the great stuff you can pull off, take a look at the top Instagram example of the script by the creator of it. Really awesome way to take something simple and create beautiful textures, melodies and space!

[mcpepe]

Today I played a little bit with the length and frecuency of the triggers and the ’ operator and I finally have got sound.
I dont have a Mangroove but next I want to try the Softcut operator. These kind of audio effects are the reason I got the Fates. I want to record a few videos. Let’s see

[xyzbm]

Can you fix ^ operator to make it work in full range? (for example for 16n)?
It should be scaled I think.
or maybe add optional input argument: maxValue
For example:

9^3

That would listen to cc3(?) and would output values from 1 to 9(max fader position)

[coreyr]

Hi, if I wanted to add crow functionality to most recent Orca update, would I add the crow lines to orca.lua and to the other .lua files in the library folder?

[TanSaturn]

That should work.
My fork is up to date now too: https://github.com/CoolLeRue/orca

[coreyr]

Thank you @its_your_bedtime and @TanSaturn! I have orca talking to crow to sequence melody in my rack, rythm samples in norns, and softcut augmenting both!!!

Edit: I guess not… I cant seem to get samples to play back

EDIT #2: battery pack I was running from was delivering low current, all good when plugged in to the wall!

[vinc]

I would like to know is there a better way to assign all the samples to the designated slot?

Also, I once tried to assign 10+ short samples, but my norns got lag.

I would like to hear the workflow from you guys, i.e. Loaded only one relatively long sample and change by shifting positions, or bunch of shot samples?

Any methods to envelope the amplitude the sample play?

Is there a way to make pannings?

Sorry for too many questions.

[Frederickk]

Recently built a Fates and am really excited about the power of Orca on Norns—I’m comfortable enough with desktop Orca.

But… for the life of me I cannot wrap my head around nor replicate what you all are doing. I’ve lurked on your IG posts, read this and the core forum, and typed what I see 1:1, but no dice.

I’ve recorded samples into Norns using Play and also feed a live input. Still nothing. I know it’s me. But I would be so appreciative of any “tutorial” or pasted sample with explaination.

#woefulYetThankful

[okyeron]

Can you confirm hardware is working properly with other scripts?

Would you walk thru all the steps of your process (trying something simple)? and then we can try to troubleshoot or offer suggestions.

[Frederickk]

Yup, other scripts work just fine. Hence, why I’m 99.9999% certain it’s not a hardware issue, but a me issue.

Here are some images to show what I’m doing, I’m trying to replicate this sketch from @its_your_bedtime

Here’s what I’ve typed in (image on Fates below)

   .Dc 2\...
    .'.565c

    .D5. V2C5
     ./182a3i

(FWIW the “2\” code seems to not work like in the original IG post, circled in image below too)

This image shows the samples I have saved in /tape/

This image shows the Orca “code” I’m trying to use copying its_your_bedtime’s IG post

Here’s a closeup, with. a circle over the \ which references by above note.

And for completeness, here’s the audio levels showing the Gameboy signal coming in, but clearly nothing coming out from Orca (I know I have monitor volume down, I’m hoping to sample the Gameboy live and use Orca to affect it… if I understand correctly that’s possible.)

Any ideas on what I’m doing wrong?

[kasselvania]

One thing I would suggest is running the tape sample in tape mode (just do play) to make sure that it is working. Second, check out what your timber parameters are. Maybe you have the volume of the sample playback too low, maybe the sample in and out point are in areas of silence for your sample. That is, if you have properly loaded the sample in the global params page.

One thing worth doing is if you hit Tab you will see some info on your beat, and a definition of what each space you’re over represents.

For the record, the \ symbol is Now used to change the settings of a selected Softcut buffer. This works by the first character choosing which buffer (1-6), the second character choosing the setting (1-4 I think?) including pan, what source it is recording from and more, and the final setting is the actual effect being applied to that parameter or setting.

I’m not sure what your experience is with ORCA, by the V allows for a value to be stored and recalled, which in the example posted is recalling some numbers that are being generated off screen.

[coreyr]

First question: is the orca clock running?

As in is (.Dc.) banging once every 16 frames? If not, hit space bar.

It looks like your timber operator has no defined sample to act on (.’.565c). If you are trying to trigger sample 1 with those parameters, use (.'0565c). Maybe try (.'05CZ0) first to be sure something will trigger. With a position of “c” your sample may be quiet at that point already. Also, samples gave to be loaded in the script parameters page.

It is possible that your softcut input is set to timber engine input only. The “” operator is the timber parameters operator. I cant remember which option is input, will need to be banged before taking effect.

Tip: press tab in orca, it will give you a read out of the currently highlighted cell at the bottom of your screen, helps with remembering which slot does what for each operator.

Edit: looks like @kasselvania beat me to it

[kasselvania]

My response wasn’t as well worded as yours. This also came at a time where 3 weeks ago I tore apart the demo, cause I love the idea of using the Softcut buffer as a melodic sound shape tool

[Frederickk]

The clock is running. I must have been missing the “Load Folder” in the params as a critical step.

Thank you for the pointers, I’m at least getting something now, although the volume is quite faint (significantly lower than when playing in Tape). This is helpful, I’ll continue to futz around a bit… otherwise, I’ll be back here with more questions. Thanks all!

[coreyr]

Note that volume parameters are 0 to Z in 36 steps, 0 being the lowest Z being the loudest.

[CarlosUnch]

New to ORCA and Norns.
Does this version support sending OSC over wifi?

[its_your_bedtime]

Yep, but not heavy tested. Address is configured here.

[Frederickk]

I finally had some time to spend with Orca on Norns… and it’s more amazing than I could have imagined. I’ve also hacked on it a bit, in ways that you all might find interesting.

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Import and Export Feature
There’s a decent community of Orca users on PatchStorage that has been out of reach for us Norns users… not any more.

I’ve added the ability to import and export these Orca files for use on Norns. The only change needed is to replace the .orca suffix with .txt Accordingly I’ve added “» Import” and “« Export” commands to the options menu. I’ve included a simple demo to get folks started.

Before I submit a pull request to @its_your_bedtime I would be thankful for a couple of brave souls to pull my import/export branch down to find bugs.

PolyPerc Engine
The second variant I’ve been working on is implementing the PolyPerc engine from Awake to be used with Orca. Timber is great, but I wanted Orca to be able to make it’s own noise

I know a couple of folks have forked Orca and are using a hyphen naming strategy, not sure if @its_your_bedtime has any ideas on how to scalably manage variants (or if it even matters).

If you’re interested in giving this a spin, pull down the poly-engine branch. I welcome all bug reports.

Over the weekend I’ll aim to post some video demos showing all of the above-mentioned in action.

[its_your_bedtime]

Cool! I wanted to make synth branch myself, but always got sidetracked by other scripts

[coreyr]

Oh my! Thank you for posting your poly-perc branch! Very excited to use this, I’d been sampling in synth tones to use with timber. It would be add the softcut commands to this branch… (maybe I’ll try splicing them in, but my attention span is short when there are new sounds to be made!) Softcut already works

Edit: the poly-perc-import-demo.txt file appears to be empty when I try to import it via the params menu. import-demo.txt works and imports midi commands.

The poly perc engine commands work like a charm though!