Initial Crow Impressions

March 14, 2025

Initial Crow Impressions #

As previously mentioned, I bought a Monome Crow, and I’ve had a gret time figuring out Lua and Druid and the whole scripting situation. Crow is sick and inspiring and fast to script for, which appeals to me. I have a bunch of Norns ideas I’ve never implemented because I can’t bring myself to spend the start-up time it would require to code. I hate to program a GUI, mostly.

On the crow, I’ve spent some time trying to dial in what I’m calling a “Frequencer” script, but there’s more to go. My dream is to consume any arbitrary audio and trigger V/oct outputs based on the detected fundamental frequency. In complex audio this is going to behave unpredictably, and that’s kind of the goal. I love the idea of extracting something that’s technically there mathematically but that isn’t psycho-acoustically actually present. Or whatever.

Here’s a link to my public repo for the script: Link

Related: I have a long-running dream to develop a piece of musical hardware that takes AC line power (e.g. the wall voltage we plug everything into) and convert it down to a safe voltage level via a transformer. Then, because wall voltage’s fundamental frequency is 120Hz in the U.S., I would filter the shit out of the signal to remove the fundamental and amplify whatever’s left, and then use that somehow. I have this optimistic vision of using it to generate a whole host of CV signals that I can control in a performance context by changing what’s connected to a power strip, for example. Turn a lamp on, induce a light sag in the local wall voltage, hear the impact in an oscillator, somehow.

Once again, manipulating and amplifying a signal to find something that’s there in the math, but that you wouldn’t ever actually experience without significant intervention.