descartes

This is a sequencer that I build for monome's norns platform. Norns is a small computer that's designed for making music. Under the hood, it uses the SuperCollider audio engine. Scripts are written in lua. Norns can be connected to a midi controller and can be used with various other hardware developed by monome. This script uses the monome grid as a controller and can be connected with crow, which is a eurorack module that can talk to norns.

While I had made several other scripts for norns prior to descartes, this is the first one that I made public. All of my previous work on the platform was more experimental, half-finished, or for hyper-specific, personal applications. I was very inspired by the response on the lines forum and have appreciated all of the feedback from the community.

In terms of design, the script is just an implementation of Make Noise's Rene v2 eurorack module. I've been using Rene for years and have always loved the design. When I sold my Rene a few years ago to make more room in my case, I missed it enough that I set out to build the script in order to be able to use the sequencer's functionality without having to set aside the room in my case. (I've since purchased the Rene again, and sold it, and purchased it again.)

I haven't yet implemented every feature in Rene v2 in the script but the fundamentals are there. I think the biggest advantage of the script over the module is that it can be used with any midi device. While I don't personally use midi much in my own workflow, it seems like that is what others have responded too most. The majority of the folks in the lines thread that ask questions or ask for new features seem to be using it to sequence midi devices the Rene module wouldn't be able to talk to.