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Comment by rzzzt | Hacker News Reader

I assume you are talking about a less obscure app like Live, Bitwig, or FL Studio, but in case not: I vaguely remember a 90s Windows application (possibly shareware) that had a 3D pre-rendered UI with keys shown on screen that looked like a payphone's keypad. You could assign beatmatched loops and hits to any key and toggle or trigger them in a synchronized manner (either with the mouse of the physical keyboard). I had loads of fun as a kid recreating Music Instructor's archetypal/self-aware cliché dance song "Hymn" with it.

Do you or anyone else know which software I'm talking about?

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I wasn't actually talking about any specific app. I'm not a musician, and while I've touched Live/FLStudio, most of my experience is just with toy ones on the web. I've seen dozens over the years with various level of complexity, but the one I remember the most vividly was a flash one called Tone Matrix, here's a non-flash remake:

https://www.maxlaumeister.com/tonematrix/

Honestly just clicking random squares, adding and removing as you go can great unlimited good sounding patterns.

Audiotool itself (the site that hosts Tone Matrix, linked from Max's page) was also very impressive at the time.

I looked around a bit on the googles and it helped me remember a French person's name who had lots of similar Flash experiments on their site; apparently that was where TM originally started: http://lab.andre-michelle.com/

The fact that browsers never managed to come together to build and integrate a proper emulation layer is truly a shame. I know there's quite a few projects out there, but we really need something built-in the browser.

I doubt it was Future Beat 3D, but that's the only one I can think of right now that sounds like what you're describing.

Wow, either that was it, or one of its precursors by a different company, Beat 2000 (I found a review on Future Beat 3D that mentions it): https://archive.org/details/beat-2000

I've been looking for it for quite a long time now, thanks!

Thank you for answering that, sincerely. You've knocked somebody's white whale out today, which is one of the most selfless things you can do. In doing so, you've probably freed up minutes or even hours of their thought for years to come.

I'm not sure it's the same software but your comment made me remember Dance eJay ( https://youtu.be/b1PpXcC8Ik0 ). It was distributed in Sweden in the 90s by a radio channel called NRJ, and I guess it was made like that in a few other countries in the EU. It was so much fun and those samples still bring back a lot of memories.

Even before that, there was a similar piece of software called Magix Music Maker, with a separate Techno edition. Good times.

The one I liked the most from the era was Arturia's Storm 3, with its interface modeled after a studio rack: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/arturia-storm-v3

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