norns
2026-07-18
- genre: norns
- currenttemp: 91f
What is this magic?
The monome norns has been a magical little music box that combines my diy desires with built in functionality. If you aren’t already familiar with this little device, it won’t take much to find a cornicopia of videos displaying it’s swiss army knife approach to music creation.
I won’t go over every detail of it but essentially it can be described as a music computer that sneezes in the face of planned obsellesence. The creators of this and several other beautiful elecronics are brian crabtree and kelli cain. They’ve been at this for 20 years. I’m late lol. The Norn I make or buy today, has the same capabilities computationally as the Norns of 10 years ago. That’s not to say htat there haven’t been updates or imporvements, quite the contrary. Updates have been regular and the capabilities have grown with the incredible contributions from the community. The reason I get the ame product ability now, that technically existed 10 years ago is because as computers and processers have gotten faster, the team has stuck to working within the frame of tech the year it was released.
I think this approach alongside opensourcing both software and hardware have created something truly special. Monome is an amazing example of what happens when we work WITH limits to make sure that users pay money towards a piece of gear that will last, can be repaired and will never go out of style.
I have been using it for a month and it’s been a blast to play. The scripts available (think music apps you can load for free) are plentiful and offer an overwhelming variaty of ways to use the gear. I got he norns shield which is a diy kit that lets you build a norns out of a raspberry pi 3 or 4. I was able to complete it in an eveneing and heard the soft tones of its welcome screen before my head hit the pillow that night.
As a programmer part of the draw comes from the ability to modify or create my own scripts depending on need or taste. The norns community at lines alongside the official documentation and tutorials are written in a way that is accessible to anyone whether they want to dive deep or keep it light.
Finding scripts like orca have given me a window into the world of permacomputing which I found I align with on a viceral level. I am not perfect but some of the ideals here I follow or aspire to both as an artist and as a human.
I hope you’ll explore this ecosystem with me as I haphazardly document my deep diving through the tutorials without the assistance of Ai. I’ve decided that I will embrace #slowcoding a term that came to me over the last few weeks as I am inundated with Ai at work and in my creative groups.
Go check out some of the amazing things this can do with a few of these links and know that if you can afford the full model direct from Monome that it is built to last, and if you need a price more in line with a budget synth the norns shield is an option.
Norns: