Samsara is a minimalist looper that invites you to slowly layer in new material as old material fades away. Toggle recording on and off easily while the loop plays, or use one-shot record mode to precisely record a single phrase. The loop duration is set in terms of tempo & beats, making it simple to integrate into other musical contexts (it uses norns’ clock system, so you can use MIDI clock & transport messages, Ableton Link, or Crow). Tap tempo is also available via K2+K3, and a click track is available via K2+E3.
You can also easily extend the loop. Say you have an awesome 1-bar drum pattern, and now you want to add harmonic content. Your harmonic phrase is probably longer than that one bar, so just hold K1 and tap K2 to double to two bars, and then again to double to four bars. Now you can layer a 4-bar harmonic phrase on top of that original 1-bar drum loop and keep everything moving.
norns (update to software version 200424 or later)
Audio in (stereo or mono, select via params menu)
Download
Latest version: v1.1.0 (8a0d38b)
Install by visiting http://norns.local/maiden when your norns is on WiFi and typing
;install https://github.com/21echoes/samsara.git
into the command entry box at the bottom of the screen.
Also available as a direct download. Unzip it, rename the folder to just “samsara”, and put the whole folder onto your norns inside the /home/we/dust/code folder
That’s the plan, yup I wanna get this to a good place, and also make sure it doesn’t hurt Pedalboard’s CPU too much (Pedalboard is already pretty CPU-hungry, depending on which effects you use). Also I’ll have to think about how the controls map over (E1 is reserved for page changes in Pedalboard)… but yeah hopefully soon!
first impressions are ‘wow, yay, this is great, damn, thanks!’
I’ve just been playing with loop length on a JF poly patch all evening – haven’t even gotten around to drums yet…
EDIT WOW, was unaware of pedal and it looks like much of the feedback I was looking to give (ex: fade to noise rather than silence, a mono mode with an open feedback path) is totally subsumed by the idea that this would be part of pedal. This is the Norns script I’ve been waiting for, man damn.
Just spent about an hour with this. I love the simplicity. Really great stuff here.
One question, for Tempo adjustment, I couldn’t change via K2 + E1 and haven’t quite figured out entering tamp tempo mode either (K2 + Tap K3). Maybe I’m missing something.
Something silly but could it be set coded as to where the paused and playing could match my daw. It stops and starts with my transport but doesn’t seem to update the display on my norns. Not a big deal but helps when I’m not wanting to use a monitor
Interesting, it works just fine on my end. You’re holding down K2 while turning E1? And you have your norns clock set to “internal”? My bet is your norns clock is set to follow midi/link/crow. I’ll update the UI to make it clear when the clock is a follower.
My bad! I forgot to call the UI refresh when you use transport messages to pause/play. Should be simple enough to fix.
When trying to change tempo while the norns clock is following an external device, an alert is shown explaining that you need to go to params to change your clock source
UI should now consistently update when play/pause/whatever-else happens, no matter where that change came from (MIDI messages, params menu, whatevs)
