I had a thought: Since the development of modes for the 201PP takes place on a computer anyway, I wanted to ask to what extent it would be possible to develop a Desktop Mother, as for the Organelle?
While I love my 201PP, I find patch-creation and bug-fixing is quite tedious compared to the Organelle, as you have to constantly switch to disk mode, copy the files, exit disk mode, find a bug, fix a bug, switch to disk mode, copy the files again, exit disk-mode, find another bug, repeat⌠you get the picture.
Unfortunately, I donât have the skillset for such a high-level project yet, nonetheless, it would make a lot of things easier and maybe it would get more people on board to create modes.
Is this something that is even possible, considering the bootup process with loading the existing modes and patterns?
There is room for improvement with the workflow for sure, and a desktop simulator setup would be great. A few thingsâŚ
It is not completely necessary to eject and exit disk mode to hear changes to a patch. If you are in disk mode and editing a patch, you can save the changes in Pd and then on the 201 use the key combo to reload the patch without exiting disk mode. Pressing the high B,C,D keys then Shift key will reload the patch but wonât kick you out of disk mode. If you are renaming things and moving files around, it is better to eject and exit disk mode, but for editing and saving files in from Pd Iâve found simply reloading the patch works fine.
You should always keep back up of what you are working on since it is possible for the disk to become corrupted, e.g. 201 looses power / unplugged while in disk mode.
There is some documentation about the structure of the software and creating modules:
One point we havenât really mentioned is the pattern and synth modules are following the Orac format. So these modules will actually load and work inside Orac. This also means it is possible to use the Organelle to develop modules for the 201 the same way one develops Orac modules. (but this doesnât mean any Orac module will run on the 201; the 201 mother patch is expecting modules with certain number of parameters with specific names)
Thanks for the detailed answer, @oweno! This is very helpful.
I initially thought that the 201 ecosystem reminds a bit of Orac, even though so far I have never looked into it too deeply. One more reason to do so finally!
As I like a little challenge though and itâs good for learning purposes Iâm currently trying to build some kind of very stripped-down mother(-in-law) patch for desktop dev ops.
Hereâs a very much stripped down version of a 201 desktop mother:
Only one synth slot is supported. Place it in the âsynthsâ subfolder. The foldername needs to start with prefix â1â, e.g. â1-My-Patchâ.
Note patterns, beat clock, preset load/save, latch and metronome are not supported.
Use your computer keyboard or a MIDI keyboard to play musical notes as you would on your 201. Only QWERTZ and QWERTY keyboard layouts are supported. In case you have a different keyboard, switch it to either one of the 2 supported layouts or adapt it to your needs in the key-setup sub-patch.
Low C = âAâ key
C# = âWâ key
etc.
Thank you for this patch AND for the video. This will be infinitely helpful in making patches (or you know, destroying them as I am most likely to do). Very excited to try this out!
Thanks @the_timber_owls - I hope itâs helpful. As mentioned, itâs very stripped down and really only suitable for basic development/patching of instrument modes - all the transport/pattern/tempo functions have been removed here.
