Looking forward to it, especially if you have found a better workflow than the guy who did his Norns walkthrough video (posted yesterday in the thread). It’s not a bad workflow - he obviously got it set up for his show - but I can’t help but wonder if there’s another way to go about it so that you don’t have to rely on human memory so much to play a show with it.
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I think that very much depends on how you use it. I know many Norns and Grid user swear by mlr, which is very much a tool for live use. Whereas I have a feeling I won’t be using it as such, but rather for a source for all my ideas that then go into the Blackbox (insert whatever final place you use here, be it a daw, an OT or whatever).
I guess this is the challenge of open-ended gear. You can approach it in many ways and because of that, you’re not sure what to do with it at all.
I know that it has been mentioned, but it’s bizarre seeing this conversation here instead of on Lines. There’s a lot of Norns discussion there - so much so that it is quite a task hiding all the topics as a regular visitor, but Norns non-user… Good to keep it here for marketing purposes though 
More wisdom and knowledge there.
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I like that Elektron users can exchange views on it; approach it from being an Elektron user as opposed to a strictly Monome user.
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And it’s fairly modest, compared to the Akai threads, to mention just one.
Well, yeah, I can appreciate that, I mean, I don’t have much Monome stuff - that community isn’t exclusively about that, or I wouldn’t be there.
Just saying you’ll get a lot more discussion there, that’s all.
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to police this shit or ask anyone to stop, just saying the discussion there will offer a lot if you’re interested in building a familiarity or a skill set with the Norns.
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That’s a very good point, tho 
I see your point. BUT, I’ve been ghosting liiiines for well over a year and have still to understand what Norns fundamentally is. For instance it wasn’t until I visited this post that I realized that softcut it is actually a 4 track tape recorder (ala OP-1) that interacts with whatever script you have.
I thought it was just another script.
My point is that people on liiiines are so engulfed in the terminology that it makes it quiet hard to penetrate the initial mystique of Norns (when going through that forum) if you’re not aquatinted to it.
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Right. And there are coders in there getting technical and Monomes marketing is very houseplant…that’s not a crticism. It’s just nice to be able to have a different approach.
In that way: composing, pattern saving/loading tool or more improv tool?
Houseplant music is just dance for plants.
I followed the launch of the Norns and I was very excited. I wanted to create a sequencer with it. But I was discouraged how messy was the documentation.
What guys do you think of it now?
I mean to write lua script and create instruments?
get both if you get a rasperry pi 4 and fates/norns header
Totally with you on the level of vocabulary being overwhelming. Generally people are pretty friendly there, so don’t hesitate to interject with questions that ask that people reframe things for beginners or people without the coding background.
That’s actually, to some degree, why I don’t have a Norns. I think I’d get bogged down in the aspects that slow me down from actually making music. Learning new skills is cool, but it’s a fine line between that and making music. So when it comes to computers, I try to keep it simple MAX and Pro Tools and I’m trying to fight the urge to go any deeper the rare moments it comes up. If I can keep chipping away at learning MAX, I’ll feel that was worth the distraction from actual music making.
My other ‘critique’ as someone who was incredibly drawn to the Aleph, is how they sort of seemed to reduce the interfacing potential in the hardware. If it was an Aleph sort of box with a more well-documented and supported software within, I would have taken the plunge without hesitation. It seems like they tried to simplify (well, relatively) both the hardware and software though and while it still seems amazing, I was able to talk myself out of it. The philosophy and aesthetic of the company I still find captivating though, so I definitely keep my eye on all they do.
Good luck with the Norns-ing everyone!
About a week’s exploration into the Norns now, and I’m leaning towards this being for synth patches and synth work, quite solid.
For sample and audio manipulation, though, it’s totally unique. As a platform, no doubt one of the most powerful out there. I’m exploring a few apps for recording and granular effects now, and I’m being more and more drawn towards this part of Norns. To create something in one app, record it straight to disc, switch to another app and keep working on the results is very liberating, in a small and handsome battery powered box.
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Okay, so here’s a track made entirely with Norns:
It’s very brief, very trivial, but there’s something to be said about the fact that this all happened within Norns.
Synth loops are from the Awake script, recorded to Norns internal tape and then put into the Reels script. Within Reels, I also added some grain samples and cuts from a drum loop.
Then, I performed all this live and recorded.
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To answer your question @xidnpnlss right now, for me, this is more composinh and writing, less performing. I’m sure someone with ninja skills at the mlr script would say otherwise, but for now, that’s where I am.
Thank you.
can you recall patterns easily, chain them so you can improvise over them while keeping within a structure?
Here is Cheat Codes writer Dan Derks tearing up a 24sec sample:
It would seem that Takt, an app that’s kind of like the Digitakt, but with stereo samples and a song mode, would work well for this. I haven’t explored it deeply, but it stores patterns, it chains them into songs, it samples, midi sequences, has delay and reverb, allows for parameter locks and all that jazz.
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Ah ok. It depends on the script. Of course. Duh. Thanks again.