NEVE new

NEVE

by VRCVS — a generative ambient sequencer for monome norns, with grid and arc support.

Snow falls, tears run down a stylised face. Every snowflake that hits the bottom plays a low note, every tear that detaches plays a high one. A third voice is yours, to play live on the grid.

Features

• Three independent voices: snow (bass), tears (melody) and live (grid). Each one can go to the internal engine (PolyPerc or mx.samples), MIDI and Just Friends (crow i2c), alone or combined.
• Harmony that fits the scale: all musicutil scales and modes. The default "auto" progression is built from the stable chords of the current scale and root, and chords change on bar boundaries. The melody follows the current chord.
• Three styles (PARAMS > generative > style):
  • slow cell (default): a 4-note cell with a fixed rhythm, slow chords, pedal bass.
  • arpeggio: a steady arpeggio on the chord with a long top note (up / down / up & down).
  • snow (random): randomly falling notes, busier and less predictable.
• Grid (128, varibright): row 1 chooses the chord and has the controls (learn, octave, arc page, next chord, pause); rows 2-8 are an isomorphic keyboard locked to the scale. learn turns your live phrases into the motif of the tears.
• Arc (4 rings, no buttons needed): 3 pages of parameters with visual feedback — amount, frequency, melodic and rhythmic variation, velocity min/max, note length, wind, delay and reverb.
• Delay and reverb, and presets: NEVE always starts with its own defaults; a preset restores everything, engine included.

Requirements

• norns. Works out of the box with the internal PolyPerc engine.
• Optional: grid, arc, mx.samples (;install https://github.com/schollz/mx.samples in maiden), a MIDI device, crow + Just Friends.

Install

From maiden: ;install https://github.com/vrcvs/NEVE (or find NEVE in the community catalog), then restart and load it from SELECT.

Quick start

Load NEVE, press K3 on the cover, then listen. Turn the encoders (E1 changes page), touch the grid, turn the arc.

Visual guides (PDF) in English and Italian are in docs/.

Notes

• Switching between PolyPerc and mx.samples reloads the script (a norns engine limitation): the screen freezes for a few seconds, then the cover returns.
• Each voice has its own volume and octave/offset parameters, so levels can be balanced for your setup.

LLM disclosure

NEVE was developed with the help of an LLM (Claude, by Anthropic). Essentially all of the Lua code, this README, the visual guides and the forum post text were generated by the model in a long conversation, following my direction.

My part: the concept (snow and tears, a melancholic but not desperate mood), the design decisions (voices, outputs, grid and arc behaviour, styles, harmony and melodic goals), and testing on real hardware (norns Fates, grid 128 varibright, arc 4). The code was revised iteratively from my listening and playing feedback. Because the code is model-generated, expect rough edges; bug reports are very welcome.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.