The idea here starts with building a code-analogy to a guitar looper pedal. Or maybe a step sequencer that runs commands instead of synth/samples directly. Start recording, execute commands, and those commands get recorded along a loop timeline. Each row of the grid is one loop (aliased to single-letter variables ‘a’-‘h’). The medium lends itself to further exploration around generating sequences, commands stopping/starting other loops, loop lengths dynamically changing, merging/splitting loops, etc.
The bundled engine is a mash up of Timber, Molly The Poly, and Goldeneye. Sounds are routed into per-loop controls for volume and pan. You can live record and slice and dice too.
I developed this to perform at FlashCrash, which went smashingly, and I put this out to share ideas. The README lists a lot of inspirations and ideas.
The biggest change is that the three sub-engines (Timber, Molly, Goldeneye) now route to per-loop mixers. So if you have a loop d with a variety of events you can do d:amp(0, 10) to fade them all out over 10 seconds.
The second biggest, and related, thing is that now you can have several Molly instances (8 are predefined). You can do molly:note('c') and then molly2:note('d') and they are completely independent.
loop:align(other_loop) to slide events into alignment
loop:slice(s1) now takes sample-variable instead of sample-variable-name
Fix loop:split(other_loop) to work more reliably and take a base-command
Fix loop:merge(other_loop) to keep relative timings (using the new loop:align)
Embedded Goldeneye - add pan, lowpass; fix rate
Lay out long loops on the grid by zooming-out (more steps-per-button)
Rename ALL to all
Next thing I’ll probably work on is to live record into samples that then get sliced so you can use this as like … a normal audio looper. Then I’ll hook it up to a midi pedal to start/stop recording.
I made some changes but then forgot to tell anyone hah. Mostly I have abandoned the super cool web UI and now have a fully on-norns grid+keyboard experience.
v0.4 (2023-03-18) - On-norns UI, live sample recording, midi-pedal
New on-norns UI
New on-norns keyboard input
Using softcut, live record a sample and then slice it into a loop
Add the ability to select a current-loop and record via midi-pedal
If the current loop is loop-1, then stretch the BPM to match the sample at 16 steps
v0.5 (2023-11-06) - Editor
Add cursor, arrow keys, home/end, and dynamic height to input editor
On-screen grid mirror
Abandon web UI
An example of the on-norns UI and an attempt at the midi-pedal is available in the delightful hot mess of a performance I did in one of the glorious Flash Crash sessions last year – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IQq8WURehc
Next up I’m going to mash the SuperCollider engine from granchild in and see what happens.
Well it would help if a refactor hadn’t actually BROKEN the grid keypresses! I just pushed an update, now on 0.5.1, so when you press grid keys then it triggers the code recorded on that step.
If you get it up and running (and I’d love to hear if you do), you can run “p” to get a piano sound, “p(62)” to play midi-key-62 on the piano. Then try this:
h:gen("p(`60+m`)")
a:rec()
That will “generate” a macro-expanded piano on the bottom grid row (row-h). Those back-ticks make it so the m turns into the grid column number. Press those keys to trigger different piano notes. the a:rec() started recording on the top grid row (row-a). Use a:stop() to stop recording, and a:stop() again to stop playing!
I’m not sure about the macro thing – now that I’ve had it for a while I suspect there are other ways to get the same effect (like a global that includes the current step number). Maybe.
Thanks for the feedback again – I realized that there was very little about the grid in the documentation. I’ve now added an initial diagram and some docs on grid usage!
