Show HN: 25 days of procedural music experiments | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: 25 days of procedural music experiments

aphall.com

4 pointsfenomas8 comments

Neat stuff! The gypsy jazz Zelda theme is really pretty on point. And the "Take 5 drum solo" really does sound like it could be just a chiptuned version of the Take 5 drum solo.

I don't see a source link, but it'd be interesting to read about how it works, e.g. how the different tunes are different from each other (completely different procedural code, or just different starting parameters?) and what packages you used and so forth.

Thanks! The short version on the tech side is, it's all hand-written and very ad-hoc. There is some mid-level code for managing patterns and notes that's reused across the demos, but the settings for how each instrument sounds, what kind of chord progressions to use, etc. is different for each demo.

I didn't use any outside libraries, but I did package up the part of my code that actually plays sounds as 'npm/soundgen' (but it's not documented at all yet..).

I would add at least one of the sounds generator to the page you submitted. I have no incentive to click any of the links.

I clicked anyway :)

I actually clicked the #1 (at the bottom) and it doesn't sound very good, but I think this is expected as a first version.

The last one #25 (at the top) is nice. Perhaps you should add both to the page so the readers can listen to the difference.

[I'd like a bit more of information, like what are you adding in each step, or why are you adding it.]

Thanks for the feedback. There is no particular pattern to the demos - I just tried to do something different each day for 25 days. So, some of them are chiptunes, some are ambient, some are gypsy jazz, etc.

In short it's the project page for a series of 25 separate experiments. I added a tl;dr to the top that may make things clearer.

Which one is the best? (Or at least, which one is the one you prefer?)

Add at least one of them (the best one) to the main page! Is it too difficult? Sorry for insisting, but I think that with at least one example the post will be much more engaging.

My favorites are the ones I linked in the tl;dr! :D I understand what you're saying and I do appreciate the feedback, but this isn't really a living product page that I'm trying to make more compelling - it's just a collection of experiments I thought HN readers might be interested in.

Probably it would be best if I resubmit this later as a "text" style submission, with a description that links directly to a few specific demos.

What about a static image that has a "|>" button (like play) and link to your favorite sample?

Something like: https://imgur.com/a/QpNxE (5 minute graphic, sorry, with more time you can make something better but I hope it's enough to understand my idea)

In case this is resubmitted by someone later, or posted in reddit or other aggregator, it would be nice to have an easier way to discover the content. I understand that this is not the main project, but a more friendly page will get you more unuseful internet points, and perhaps too many visit to break your server. You will not get money, but at least a tiny amount of recognition.

Anyway, if someday you decide to make a post with more technical information about how you wrote them, I'd like to read it. (both the programing part and/or the music part).

Procedural music seems to show up a fair amount on HN, so I thought folks might like this.

Of possible interest - none of the demos use any audio samples. All the sounds are being generated from scratch out of oscillators, noise buffers, and so on.

Enjoy!

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