lnra-8

LNRA-8. Organismic synthesizer for norns

A norns interface to Mike Moreno's LIRA-8, A Pd emulation of SOMA's LYRA-8.

What is an "organismic synthesizer"? SOMA says of their LYRA-8

“Organismic” means that LYRA uses some principles that lie in the base of living organisms. The way how LYRA’s modules interacting between each other and the behaviour of the instrument resembles a live conversation.

It is a kind of a hierarchical organization of eight oscillators in four pairs on two sides, with cross-modulation. LFO, delay and distortion to taste.

LIRA-8 is a Pd emulation/version/variation of that. It is in itself great fun to explore on the computer, running Pure Data or it's modern variant plug data. LNRA-8 continues my interest/intéressement exploring Pd on our beloved norns as a sound engine alternative to SuperCollider, earlier started with Swarmatron and a growing bunch of private explorations. Running LIRA-8 on norns rather than a computer is probably worse than on real computer (limited UI; audio glitching), but also somehow better (fun; "why not?"; MIDI mapping). You can ruminate on "worse" and "better" under the concept of organismic, while zoning/droning yourself out with LNRA-8.

Thanks to Mike Moreno for making LIRA-8, and for granting me permission to publish this modest norns interface to it. We have a thread on SOMA Labs Lyra 8.

Requirements

• norns
• Pure Data installed on norns

LIRA-8, thereby lnra-8 has a lot of controls, so you will probably want MIDI and/or OSC controllers and map them via the params menu.

Documentation

The main part is represented on the norns screen.

You can change the pitch (=droning) of left and right sides with E2 and E3, and their holds with K1+E2 and K1+E3 respectively. If you have a grid, using the screen as a guide you can use it to move E2 and E3 to other parameters of the left and right side of the synth, respectively. The shifted with K1 will remain on the two holds. E1 mixes in both the mod delay and distortion.

If you choose a MIDI controller and a channel in the parameters, you can use eight white keys from middle-C upwards to hold the eight sensors. If you have a crow, the two crow inputs will take over the 1234 and 5678 pitches.

LNRA-8 interface mimics those of LIRA-8 and LYRA-8. Those are both good to keep in front of you when you familiarize yourself with LNRA-8.

LIRA-8	LYRA-8

Oscillator tuning as well as modulations are randomized on startup, and effect mixes turned down. Adjust modulation amount and paths, brighness and other stuff in the parameters, or better yet map them to MIDI or OSC controllers.

Download

1. install Pure Data (Pd) on your norns
   • either sudo apt update and sudo apt install puredata over ssh
   • or os.execute("sudo apt update && sudo apt install puredata") in Maiden REPL
2. Install this script with ;install https://github.com/xmacex/lnra-8
3. Cross fingers and hope it will work.

That should be it. Later I hope to use Mike Moreno's LIRA-8 as a git submodule rather than including it directly.