scripting

cooking at home

By this point, you’ve probably downloaded a few projects and hopefully have had a few ideas of your own. Maybe you want to extend the functionality of a particular script or add something that solves a new musical problem? Perhaps you’ve been looking for a script that does __, but nobody’s built it yet!

Scripting for norns is remarkably rewarding. For script development, we have chosen Lua as the primary language. Lua is very readable and approachable for those with no coding experience.

If you wish to dig deeper into the capabilities of norns, this is where to start:

norns studies

comprehensive tutorials on individual elements of the norns ecosystem. through these resources, you’ll learn how to translate your musical ideas into Lua scripts and how to extend those scripts to speak with all kinds of friends.

core concepts:

• many tomorrows // variables, simple maths, keys + encoders
• patterning // screen drawing, for/while loops, tables
• spacetime // functions, parameters, time
• physical // incorporating grids + midi
• streams // system polls, osc, file storage

extended techniques:

• softcut studies // a multi-voice sample playback and recording system built into norns
• clock studies // create timed and clock-synced function calls: loops, repetition, and delays

micro:

• grid recipes // short snippets of code for canonical grid interactions
• norns: tutorial // chunked examples that reveal the idiosyncrasies of the core norns concepts from Devine Lu Linvega

further

• norns script reference + faq
• programming in lua (first edition)
• lua 5.3 reference manual
• lua-users tutorials
• lua in 15 mins

community

Ask questions and share what you’re making at llllllll.co

Edits to this study welcome, see monome/docs