A Whimsical Odyssey.

Imagine, if you will, a world where sounds have colours, algorithms whisper secrets, and tiny digital sprites dance at your fingertips. Go on... do it! Now, picture this world as a vast, uncharted ocean of emotion, with depths still unexplored and treasures yet undiscovered. That's it!

Welcome to my very own technicolour journey through the wonderland of “boutique electronic instruments”, where the Norns & Organelle reign supreme as curious captains of a ship sailing the seas of human feeling, navigating by stars made of hidden sounds and constellations of unexpressed emotions.

The Siren Song of the Odd & Wonderful.

I’ve written previously about my decision to explore music, in an attempt to inform my creative practice and add depth to my output. So it is that in a universe dominated by shiny, knob-laden synthesisers, geeks and computers masquerading as mixing consoles, I have recently discovered something of a parallel dimension.

No, really, I have.

Here it transpires, the strange and wonderful thrive, and the Norns & Organelle are the quirky gatekeepers to this realm of sonic sorcery and emotional alchemy.

The thing is, the Norns & Organelle aren't just instruments; they're more like divining rods for the soul, tuning forks that resonate with the hidden frequencies of our innermost selves. They beckon to anyone who finds beauty in the unexplored, who hear melodies in the static between radio stations, and who believe that the best music is the kind that surprises even its creator – and perhaps more importantly, reveals the creator to themselves.

Norns: The Enigmatic Cube of Curiosities

First Date with Destiny (and My Inner Child)

Picture this: a small, enigmatic cube sits before you, three knobs protruding like antennae seeking signals from distant stars – or perhaps from the far corners of your psyche. This is Norns, and our first meeting felt more like a blind date set up by a well-meaning but slightly mad scientist friend, with my inner child tagging along for good measure.

"Hello," I said cautiously to the box. It blinked back with its cyclopean screen, as if to say, "Prove yourself worthy, mere mortal!”

A synergy perhaps? A challenge accepted at any rate.

The Dance of the Encoders (and Emotions)

Learning to communicate with Norns was like trying to decipher an alien language where each dialect is a different interpretive dance, and each dance move corresponds to a long-forgotten feeling. I twirled encoders, pushed buttons, and occasionally pleaded with the device to make sense. Slowly, the mists began to clear, and I found myself not just making sounds, but painting with the colours of nostalgia, sculpting with the clay of half-remembered dreams, and weaving tapestries of tones that resonated with parts of myself I didn't know existed.

One particularly satisfying interaction led me to create a patch that somehow captured the exact feeling of a day in the forest – lazy, warm, and tinged with the bittersweet knowledge that all such experiences are fleeting. To me at least, the sounds emanating from Norns weren't just pleasant; they were a key unlocking rooms in my creativity I wasn’t even aware of.

Down the Rabbit Hole of Lua (and Self-Discovery)

Diving into Norns’ scripting language, Lua, felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, if that rabbit hole was lined with lines of code and the occasional "aha!" moment that felt like finding an unexpected mushroom that made everything momentarily clear – about both coding and myself.

I typically emerged from my efforts bleary-eyed but euphoric, having bent the very fabric of Norns' reality to my will. Or so I thought, until the next weird bug sent me spiralling back into the abyss of syntax errors and logical loops.

The thing is, even in frustration, I was learning. And that feels so good.

Each session became a metaphor for working through emotional knots, each solved problem a small victory not just in code, but in self-understanding.

The Cosmic Community of Quirk (and Catharsis)

As my journey went on, I discovered a whole new fellowship of fellow travellers, a merry band of misfits and mad scientists gathered around the digital campfire of the “Lines” forum. Here, in this magical place sonic-ideas bounce around like excited particles in a hadron collider, occasionally smashing together to create new elements of musical inspiration and emotional revelation.

Sharing a particularly vulnerable piece created on Norns – a soundscape that to me represented the feeling of saying goodbye to a another life (if you know, you know) – I found not just technical appreciation, but genuine emotional resonance. It was as if, through these curious instruments, together we had found a new language to express the inexpressible.

Organelle : The Patchwork Playground of Perpetual Possibility.

A Familiar Face in a Funhouse Mirror (of the Soul)

So that’s Norns for now, but what of my other companion? Enter the Organelle M, looking like a calculator that escaped from an alternative 1970's where funk was the dominant form of mathematics and emotions were measured in Hz and dB. Its keyboard grinned at me, wooden keys spread wide as if to say, "Come on in, the water's weird, deep, and full of forgotten feelings!"

So in I dove.

Patch Picking in the Garden of Forking Paths (and Feelings)

Exploring the Organelle's patch library felt like wandering through Jorge Luis Borges' Garden of Forking Paths, where each turn leads to a new universe of sound and a new facet of emotional experience. One moment I'd be crafting lush pads that would make Brian Eno blush, capturing the vast, eclectic feeling of contentment that comes in rare, perfect moments. The next, I'm generating patterns so complex they threatened to tear holes in my space-time continuum – or maybe in the fabric of my understanding of my own emotional landscape. Who knows?

Pure Data: Where Spaghetti Code Meets Modern Art

Learning the Organelle’s coding language, Pure Data, was like being handed a box of spaghetti and being told to build a suspension bridge across the chasm of human experience. At first, my patches looked like the doodles of a caffeine-addled octopus having an existential crisis! No disrespect to caffeine-addled octopuses.

But slowly, the chaos coalesced into a more beautiful, if slightly deranged, order. I began to see music in flowing streams of data, each connection a synaptic leap in a grand, evolving composition – a map of the neural pathways of joy, sorrow, and everything in between.

One sultry, sleepless night, fuelled by nothing more than curiosity and anticipation, I created a patch that translated the migration patterns of birds around the world – into sound. The result was a sort of externalised stream of consciousness, a direct line from my nervous system to the speakers. It was raw, often chaotic, and more revealing than any journal entry I'd ever written.

The Odd Couple: Norns & Organelle's Excellent Adventure

As I have grown more comfortable (or at least less afraid) with both instruments, I have begun to imagine them as old vaudeville partners, each with their own distinct personality but harmonising in the most unexpected ways – a double act specialising in the excavation of long-buried feelings and the crystallisation of ephemeral emotional states.

MIDI Madness and Modular Mayhem (in the Key of the Human Heart)

Connecting Norns & Organelle to one another felt like introducing two pen pals who had been writing to each other in code for years, each letter a different shade of human experience. The resulting conversations were part symphony, part argument, and entirely captivating. Melodies would start on one device, morph through the other, and emerge as something that defied classification but demanded to be felt.

I set up a feedback loop between the two instruments, with Norns generating evolving patterns based on a musical interpretation of growing plants, while Organelle processed and reinterpreted these patterns through a series of emotional filters. The result was a constantly shifting soundscape that seemed to reflect not just my current emotional state, but the complex interplay of feelings, memories, and subconscious currents that make up a human psyche.

The Exquisite Corpse of Electronic Music (and the Human Condition)

The three amigos – myself, Norns, & Organelle – engaged in a never-ending game of exquisite corpse, each building on the other's ideas in a spiral of ever-increasing complexity and beauty. Together, we are now painting soundscapes that stretch from the depths of the ocean to the far reaches of space, all from the comfort of my studio at home. But more than that, we are charting maps of inner space – the territories of feeling that lie beyond words.

Reflections in a Funhouse Mirror (of the Soul)

Looking back on this journey so far feels like trying to describe a dream while still half-asleep, or like attempting to capture the entirety of human experience in a single drop of water. A few hazy truths have emerged:

Embracing the Glitch (in Sound and Self)

In a world obsessed with perfection, Mr. Norns & Mrs. Organelle have taught me to find beauty in the glitch, meaning in the mistake, and music in the malfunction.

Every unexpected beep became a doorway to new possibilities, every "error" a chance to explore an uncharted emotion. I learned that our "flaws" and unexpected quirks – in both our music and ourselves – are often what make us most wonderfully human.

The Zen of Knob Twiddling (and Emotional Tuning)

There's an absolute meditative quality to working with these intriguing instruments, a flow state where time dissolves, and you find yourself having deep philosophical conversations with a digital screen at 3 AM. In these moments, the boundaries between self and sound blur. Adjusting parameters becomes a form of self-exploration, each twist of a knob fine-tuning not just the audio output, but my own emotional frequency.

The Joy of Not Knowing (Your Next Feeling)

Perhaps the greatest lesson, if you like, has been learning to love the unknown – in music, in emotion, in life. In a musical landscape where every sound is categorised, quantised, and commodified, both Norns & Organelle remain beautiful ciphers, always with one more secret to reveal. Similarly, I've learned to approach my own emotional life with the same sense of curiosity and openness, embracing the unexpected twists and turns of the heart's complex melody.

Peering into the Crystal Ball (or Oscilloscope) of the Soul

So, as I continue down this rabbit hole of bleeps and bloops, of hidden sounds and uncharted emotions, I can't help but wonder what strange new inner vistas await me.

Will we one day compose symphonies that can cure heartbreak or sonify the precise feeling of seeing a loved one after years apart? Will AI collaborators, bring their own digital dreams to life and help us understand the nuances of silicon emotions?

Regardless, I know it will be weird, wonderful, and full of surprises. And isn't that the point of this grand adventure we call music – and indeed, life itself?

An Ode to the Odd (and the Deeply Felt)

So here's to the Norns and the Organelle, those curious contraptions that have turned my world upside down and inside out recently, that have helped me dive deep into the ocean of human feeling and emerge with pearls of sound and self-knowledge.

Here's to the bleeps that became symphonies, the bloops that became beats, and the endless possibilities that lie in the spaces between notes and between heartbeats.

To those of you standing on the edge of this rabbit hole, wondering whether to take the plunge: I say "jump!". A wonderland awaits, and the tea party of mad musical scientists and emotional explorers will always have room for one more. They let me in, after all.

And me? Well, I'll be here, lost in the lilting lullabies of my silicon companions, painting pictures with sound and writing poems in Pure Data, each composition a new exploration of the vast, beautiful, terrifying, and wonderful landscape of human emotions. My journey continues, one strange, beautiful noise – and one newly discovered feeling – at a time. I'm documenting my attempts on a cheeky Cargo website, if you'd like to hear / see more:

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think my Norns is trying to tell me something. Or maybe it's just hungry for some new code. Or perhaps it's nudging me towards some unexplored corner of my psyche.

In this whimsical world of electronic oddities and emotional archaeology, it's often hard to tell the difference – and that's exactly how I like it.

After all, isn't the exploration of hidden sounds really an exploration of our hidden selves? And in that intersection of silicon and soul, of digital and deeply felt, we might just discover new languages for the inexpressible, new maps for the uncharted territories of the heart.

So here's to the journey, in all its bleeping, blooping, emotionally resonant glory.

May your oscillators always oscillate, your envelopes always envelope, and your heart always be open to the next surprising sound – and the next surprising feeling it might unlock.