Norns

I just got all the parts to build one too! Doh!

Pi4b huh?

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I read somewhere in the lines forum that there is only one rpi 4 - which is the b. Donā€™t quote me :sweat_smile:

What are the coolest scripts?

wrms, haven, o-o-o, icarus, arcologies, grd, lissadron, orca

I have on my list so far to check out asap

so happy to have two to play with ā€¦soon!

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My favourites are glaciers, barcode and dronecaster

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Pedalboard- for processing incoming audio to record. Granchild- for turning those recordings into beautiful swells of granules and cliched shards. If my Norns was only comprised of those two, it would still be worth the price.

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Honorable mention- Bidiwave, which is a wavetable synth. It definitely has some bugs and not the most elegant of interfaces, but it has a really cool built in macro function
that allows you to easily morph between different wavetable ratios for beautiful evolving sounds.

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I am about to get back into norns, when it arrives. Super excited to dive deeper on the loopers than I did the first time (canā€™t believe I sold my shield a while back, but excited to have a metal cased one)

Anyone using it in lieu of a traditional DAW? But for experimental music I am thinking I donā€™t really wanā€™t to deal with Ableton anymore. Iā€™ve gotten a lot of mileage out of it but ugh, sat down with it over the weekend a few times and just wasnā€™t really enjoying using my hours in it.

What parts of the traditional computer has/hasnā€™t norns replaced for you? Obviously you need a browser to write/edit scripts, and I donā€™t know if thereā€™s much overlap with an audio editor like audacity. But the tape recording and master bus (reverb/compression) fills most of my post processing needs other than some minor splicing, fading in/out, and stuff like dithering, converting to MP3. Could I do this on my phone?

The Norns is certainly limited if youā€™re trying to replace the functionality of a DAW. I use it mostly for processing audio, but I recently started using it as a live instrument as well (Iā€™ve never owned the Grid but Iā€™ve been using a Faderfox UC4, which works perfectly for my needs). Both approaches ultimately end up being recorded with the Tape function. Iā€™ll then take those recordings and put them into my DAW (MacBook, ipad, or iphone, depending on where Iā€™m sitting) for final mixing- incorporating them into a song or turning them into samples for my Octatrack and M8. Sometimes Iā€™ll skip the mixing process and sample them directly into my other samplers. It really depends on my setup at the time, but everything ultimately gets mixed on a computer or ipad.

Btw, where did you get your metal case from?

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Iā€™m not sure about dithering, but everything else you mention can be done on an iphone.

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I had recently sold a few things and the prototype silver version popped up last week and I happened to be perusing linesā€¦ Couldnā€™t help myself. But the partial proceeds donation involved, thanks to the wonderful people at Monome, makes the big purchase feel worthwhile.

Yeah that workflow does seem like what iā€™ll be doing too. I donā€™t want to be stuck in Abletonā€™s 2-3Y upgrade cycle forever, as the value being added has been becoming increasingly incremental (in my opinion), so maybe iā€™ll try a more open source alternative or something.

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Of all the threads sitting in my ā€œunreadā€ list since I found time to re-engage with the forum, this is the one Iā€™ve waited longest to dip into - probably because itā€™s the one Iā€™m most excited about and which will doubtless kick me off into a spiral of Norns-ness.

I have a Norns (Shield version that I bought pre-assembled) and I absolutely love it. I have a pair of Launchpad Mini Mk2s that I use with MIDIgrid and a Faderbank 16n that I fancy attaching to it (but havenā€™t actually done yet). I also got a PiSound along with another Pi and a touch screen which I intended to use as a MODEP unit, but Iā€™m wondering now whether Iā€™m more likely to turn it into another Norns box (if thatā€™s possible).

I participated in a course that Dan Derks led last year and it was such a fantastic way to dive into the ecosystem. I havenā€™t had chance to explore it anywhere near as much as Iā€™d like to, but I can absolutely foresee a point where Iā€™d have more than one!

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If you find a way to add that screen to the PiSound? Pisound sadly occupies / uses most of the pins needed for those displays.

I am looking for a solution to this as wellā€¦ I think HDMI is not an option for norns as a SDL output (that what itā€™s called, right?)

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Ah, crap, Iā€™m just catching up on the issues with GPIO being used with PiSound. Iā€™ve got a screen that uses HDMI so I guess Iā€™ll keep it as a MODEP box (once I actually put it together).

Maybe I can use it as a kind of Organelle tooā€¦ It seems like it offers a lot of potential!

Also, Iā€™ve very late to the party but takt is blowing my mind. Canā€™t wait to try it out

Does anybody know how hard it is to make animations on that beautiful screen? Are there any tutorials? Libraries? Guides? It would be in Lua, right? Iā€™d love to get into designing tiny pixel animations.

Reading about metro right now ā€¦ and investigating further

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I should also point out that there are some great things on Vimeo in case anyone hasnā€™t found them already. Brianā€™s channel is a fantastic starting point:

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Not too bad - there are a couple gotchas, mostly around remembering to ā€œput the pen to paperā€ so to speak. I made the ā€œSMASHā€ script, which involved lots of abuse of drawing routines, and I can answer questions about it.

My friend/bandmade Tyler (who also made Arcologies) has a bunch of norns tutorials that might help.

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that should get me started! thx Tyler!

And thx for your offer - I will get my Norns in the next two days. I hate that we have such sunny weather right now :sweat_smile:

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Etters? I love his stuff. Once Iā€™ve worked through the sessions Iā€™ve already purchased, his Music Hackspace session is next on my Norns-education curriculum.

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do you have a link to those?

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Yeah! Tyler is awesome. We got Dronecaster going together too. It was mostly his baby - I got the sort of SC backbone working and then Ezra Buchla came in and rewrote all my code lol

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https://musichackspace.org/semantic-search-function/?_semantic_search=Norns

Thereā€™s some truly superb stuff - itā€™s a great way to get familiar with the environment

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