The open source music community is blooming with creative ideas – unique sequencers, synths, loopers and effects are being shared by many innovative creators – from well-known commercial contributors like Mutable Instruments and projects like Pure Data and SuperCollider, to independent hobbyists posting innovative ideas on various forums.

The problem with open source music platforms like Organelle, Raspberry Pi, Bela and others is that there’s no easy to use “glue” to connect one idea with another.

Hardware musical instruments have MIDI, Eurorack has control voltage and patch cables, and VSTs have DAWs, but if you want to connect one open source project with another, you’ve got to dive into the source code, whether it’s C++, or even the visual Pure Data, something that is outside the reach of most musicians.

With today’s release of Orac, by developer Mark Harris (“Techno Bear”), that can change. Orac, short for “Organelle Rack” but in no way limited just to that platform, is an open source project designed to be the glue that open source music projects need.

Orac is a musician friendly environment that makes connecting music-oriented open source components as easy as connecting a MIDI cable. Orac can host these components, easily link them together in sequential or parallel tracks, pass around audio and MIDI data, keep everything in sync (along with Ableton Link support), and support full MIDI in and out, including MIDI learn for easy controller mapping.

Orac also supports saving entire patches as presets, so once you created a layout, it’s easy to store and recall it.

Orac for Organelle is available for free right now on http://www.patchstorage.com/orac/

Check out Mark’s youtube channel for a detailed overview of Orac on Organelle as well as for updates on support for future platforms: https://www.youtube.com/user/cortijogazquez/videos