Metronomica.blog
jamuary 16, 2025
I’m going to write out a signal/cable flow first, for posterity:
- Norns Shield sends midi out via USB-A to a 5-pin midi connector, which goes into a very old Focusrite Saffire USB interface
- The interface’s USB cable goes into a powered hub, which is… powered
- The hub is connected to the iPad via a USB-A to USB-C adapter
OK. So that’s how I got Norns, specifically the Fall script, to sequence a Decent Sampler instrument for today’s Jamuary piece. Everything would have been way simpler if I had an all-in-one interface like one of those iConnectivity interfaces, but I don’t, and I wanted to see if I could make it work with things I had.
In the end, this was a wildly janky solution — dongles upon dongles, cables that had been so carefully managed in the back of my desk ripped up and reused — and was incredibly non-ergonomic. The iPad sat in front of me on the desk, but in front of that was the USB hub, which I couldn’t move because it needed to be close to the iPad and the interface. I have a midi-to-USB cable running out of the hub that’s connected to my main interface (and my macbook, as such), and that runs underneath my desk until it pops out of a hole at the other end. That’s where the 5-pin side connected to the interface, but the USB side was all the way at the other end and had very little slack, meaning the Norns had to live all the way at the edge of the desk, facing sideways. Does that make sense? No? OK. Here’s the song.
It’s nice to know that I can connect the two, and I’m going to start thinking about ways to make the process more plug-and-play without spending much money. Perhaps at some point I’ll want a robust interface for my iPad, so I can have a few synths/soundmakers that easily connect, as well as an input for live guitar. But for now I’m trying to be careful to build out my iPad vocabulary slowly. That way maybe I can avoid GAS and be more purposeful with the direction I go. Never said anything like that before!
Did this song need Fall to sequence it? No way. Do I like it? Yes way! Fall gets a couple of Do-Re-Mi toy synths from Decent Sampler to do its bidding, with very long attack and decay to create an ambient bed. Samplr gives us a drone. A Decent Sampler piano gets hit with two very sparse notes from Fugue Machine, played in all directions and speeds.
There is so much creativity in the Norns ecosystem and, to this point, I’ve mostly used the tool for audio processing. Feed a script a sample, enjoy. But I may have unlocked the midi side of things now, and that feels like opening up a brand-new present.
// tags: making music jamuary