Orac : release 1.0

After seeing the Loopop Organelle video about ORAC I purchased one for my son and I. Im a bit of a neophyte to synths/ modular but am really having a great time with the Organelle. Its become more fun that our OP-1. I work in marketing and am glad to see C&G really starting to promote this innovative update. The new video is really well done, hats off to them.

Anyways, I wanted to just give a shoutout to @thetechnobear on the work put in. Do you have a Patreon account or is there a place where we can kick in a few bucks as appreciation?

Best,
Knobby

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Any chance of anyone uploading an easy-to follow ORAC “manual”? as a pdf. I know there are video tutorials out there, but I really like being able to read step by step instructions from a bit of paper! Thanks folks

I think sitting down to watch the video once will be enough to get you started playing with orac, it’s not that tech really :slight_smile: If @thetechnobear wants to write a mini manual - cool!
Edit: I should also point out, we already kinda have one in the form of this topics first post!

Hey! I am having a bit of trouble here… I am in no way any kind of developer, so I’m sure this is definitely some stupid thing I did… I am trying to rename the presets in the orac-rack file, but now not only do I not see the ‘preset’ menu on the orac, but my presets have disappeared on the organelle. On the file they are all still there. Ill attach a screenshot of how it is laid out. I tried to find some default images of how the orac-rack file is supposed to look like but couldn’t… Thanks!

PS This as initially named ‘New 5’ but I changed it to tremverb–super cool guitar or synth effect!

id need to have the whole in text form to determine whats wrong.
perhaps you could upload it to drop box or something and share the link here.

as for resetting, you can download the orac.zop file again, use unzip to unpack it , and you will find this file in their with the default settings.

Ok, here is the file! I appreciate the help. I reverted the names back to “new x” and still there is the same issue…

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rg7vwqouofkgcv8/orac-rack.json?dl=0

So I just re-downloaded orac, built a module, unplugged, and tried renaming it in the .json file. I made sure that I didn’t change anything other than the name, but the same issue occurred! Am I doomed to not be able to rename these patches? I am using apple textedit to change the name, should I be using a different application?

ok, your issue is you are using the wrong type of double quotes
if you look very closely on your image above, you will see that the quotes you have around the tremverb are slanted forwards, where as all the other quotes are straight… these will not work, as they are not the same thing.

this is actually a function of the editor your using, often when do so called ‘smart quotes’, unfortunately this done because these editors are trying to be simple word processors (i.e. for letters) rather then text editors.

there are a couple of ways of avoiding this :slight_smile:
a) dont touch the quotes when you edit it.
b) make sure the editor is treating this as a plain text document (see this article for more details)

I’ll be honest this is why personally I do not use things like TextEdit (mac) or WordPad (windows) because they tend to want to make things ‘pretty’ and reformat it. whereas when editing text files you want it to leave the F* alone… if your an experienced user you can avoid it, but it catches beginners out all the time!

Id recommend that users download one of the many free text editors(*) , probably Atom is good choice. (though i admit i dont use it, as I purchased SublimeText which is fantastic if you do alot of coding!)

(*) sometimes these are also referred to as programmers editors, as developers are the primary users.

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Amazing! Thank you so much. Atom works like a charm!

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@thetechnobear is there any other resources or support to look at when transferring and modding patches over to orac other than messaging or tagging you?

The two videos I made ?

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I mean that was a given. But the videos seem to only cover the more basic points. I was thinking something with more in depth coverage.

If not obviously that’s fine. It just seems like having all of this info rely on one person could stunt the growth for it.

I think the videos go well beyond ‘the basics’ considering they go into quite some details about what to look for.

the issue is there are two sides to this.
a) what is needed for orac to work.
b) what is need to convert an existing patch such that it can be used alongside other patches

there are only a few things for (a) , and this is related to the config file, and inlets, naming etc…
these are I think quite well explained, or explained as well as i can

(b) Ive given really an overview of the things that might trip you up, and really i think everything i needed to do for the 50 odd modules I did.
but beyond that it becomes about the specific patch, how it works, and what ‘assumptions’ it makes… really that just needs basic pure data skills to deal with.
not sure what I can add really…

also I think some of ‘the future’ is about designing modules from scratch, rather than converting, and I believe that is actually much simpler - since it doesn’t involved disentangling an existing patch.

consider this… look at the number of posts on here, asking how to add fairly trivial function to existing patches, users find this difficult - so converting to a module is kind of the same, you have to know how the patch works, and thats not alway easy

I notice a problem with some of my preset when recalling them after (Apart from the fact that I still haven’t found the way to rename them).

So in most of them I’m using the 3*3+1.
In the first on I use eucl seq with sample24 (replace the loops by single shots). With my controller I midi map all the probability to be able to create beats on the fly by turning 4 knobs. Last module is either the swing clock or some effect (dirt or revb…)
In the second channel use an eucl sequencer has well but into rings, rohde, element… But this time I control the probabilities and the notes value at the same time. Last module would be an effect or a midi note skipper before. All midi maps with 8 knobs on my Arturia mini lab mkII
Last channel would be my “lead” with whatever synth and effects.

The problem always occurs in the channel 2. Sometimes with rings (1 out of 3 presets) but always a problem with Elements. All midi maps are working fine but the eucl module doesn’t send midi notes to the next one (rings or elements) I can still ply elements with the wood keyboard but the sequencer doesn’t sequence it. Even so all probabilities are 16/16, all midi notes are ON in the 3*3+1 modules.

It’s only appearing in those thirsty modules but not (at least yet) if I’m using some less cpu consuming modules such as lofi piano or rohde…

Anyone noticed such thing? Am I doing something wrong or I just should stop considering doing this with element since I cannot recall it and have to switch element for an other module, than back, than redo all mapping to be able to use this preset (which is not doable live or at band practice)…

Thanks for any inputs!

Here can be hear in jam setup apart from guitar, bass and voices all the rest come from such presets:

First Orac jam

Wondering if there’s a way to get an external midi keyboard to stick to one module (or one chain) even when switching to others on the organelle - I tried looking through a lot of the orac posts, I’m sure if it’s possible it’s in there somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. @thetechnobear - if you have a moment, a little help here would go a long way :slightly_smiling_face:

edit: also - I’ve had great success with Atom renaming presets, thank you so much for all the detailed info you’ve given on that. How does one delete a preset? and, is there any order to how they are organized in the preset menu (or any way to create order - as it’s not alphabetical)

edit: (last question I promise!) I’ve duplicated and renamed Sampler24 to load up my own samples. Noticed when jumping between modules it still said “Sampler24” (rather than my “s24vBeats2” - seemed to work though. BUT - then I did “update preset” and “save” and when I come back to the preset later it loads the original Sampler24 module - help here would be stellar

You need to change the module.json file and also the module.pd file to reflect the name change

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yes, set midi controller to channel 2, and set chain midi input to channel 2.
and make sure organelle global midi settings have midi channel set to 1, not omni (0)

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thx! I just changed the module.json and it seems to have solved the preset issue - any reason to be concerned over not also changing the module.pd? (I’ve still yet to acquire an hd monitor/mouse to get into this). Any idea how to delete presets?

it will internally in KontrolModule still be using the same name as the duplicated module…
this may cause an issue as KontrolRack and KontrolModule will be using different names, Im not sure what if any issues that will cause, as its a use-case ive not tested, and would not consider a bug.

that said, I will look at the where the module name is currently being used, im pretty sure I can remove it from module.json … ideally id remove it from module.pd too (so the module name is purely defined by the subdirectory) , but that is a bit more problematic… and whilst it suits orac, its not ideal for Kontrol.

you need to carefully delete everything from the preset name to the end of that section

BUT back it up before making any changes, its easy to get this wrong, then none of the presets will load.

basically its something like

{
"presets" : {
   "preset1" : {
     /// blah blah blah
    }, 
   "preset2" : {
     /// blah blah blah
    },
   "preset3" : {
     /// blah blah blah
    }
}

you need to change too.

{
"presets" : {
   "preset1" : {
     /// blah blah blah
    }, 
   "preset3" : {
     /// blah blah blah
    }
}

the key thing is to find the correct }, if you get the wrong one you will break it, and the file will refuse to load.
but its not too difficult if your careful since the file is correctly indented.

special note: there is a comma between each preset but none on the last one, so if you remove the last preset, then you need to make sure there is no comma on the last line for the preceding preset.

for more information, you can google ‘json file format’ and find an explanation on how json files are formatted.

(sorry, I dont have enough time to give a more detailed walkthrough of this, hopefully this will point you in the right direction)

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