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Comment by eth0up | Hacker News Reader

I'm an arpeggio fiend. I could easily and gladly live without ever hearing another beat again, though I could tolerate the tablas I suppose... but melody is what I need. My keyboard skills are crippled and I don't even have one, my classical guitar is stagnant, and I use Linux, so electronic music production is forbidden. What to do?

I guess I'll play the cube until I can get AI to render an infinite variation/s of Toccata and Fugue in some unknown perfect tone.

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Loads of music production opportunities on Linux! Reaper (which I use, albeit in Windows), Bitwig, Ardour, Renoise (which, as a tracker, may be more approachable for Devs), and more besides! And there's always CMusic (with various bindings, including Python) if you want something more akin to a sketchpad/algorithmic system...

If I went awol from Linux, I'd give abelton a go, but I won't. Now that pulse and alsa seem dead (forgot name of new substitute), at least in Debian, I might pursue some of these.

Hello fellow arp fiend. What I did: Go full hardware with a Squarp Pyramid or Hapax sequencer. Then stack multiple Arpeggiator effects on a channel to a MIDI synthesizer. Wire up the touch pad x/y axis to control some of the arp parameters or modulate them with an LFO. Get crazy, yo.

https://squarp.net/legacy/pyramid/manual/effects/#sHqFsaX

As a bumbling occasionally drooling dilettante with exquisite ears, I wonder if I'm capable of figuring this out. Seems a hopeful route otherwise .

Honestly, MIDI is dumb in beautiful way. Considering that generations of near-luddite stoner musicians with a strong craving for novelty figured it out, your lambda HN participant will be pushing out bleeps and bloops in 30 minutes of determination. The rest is just reading the manual and realizing possible combinations of features.

Can't speak for other sequencers, but Squarps have a very coherent UI and doc that make it easy to remember where the fingers go when setting things up and when actually playing notes.

Also note that I'm using your Linux excuse as an opportunity to justify my grown man toys but if we're being real you can probably achieve similar result using free software with a bit of research. Linux is a very capable music platform in theory, with kernel support for MIDI routing between apps and devices. The choice of music apps isn't too shabby either.

"near-luddite stoner musician" gave me serious flashbacks from my past. Eery.

Speaking of man toys, and Linux being theoretically very capable as a music platform, I'm reminded of this beast that I discovered very recently: https://zynthian.org/

It looks quite amazing, and maybe I will buy it after the tooth fairy drops me a bit of cash under the pillow. But upon seeing it I got that feeling - ok sure, loads of capalities, but would I actually figure that thing out, sure I've plugged in a MIDI device or two, finger-smashed a few beats, but did I actually have a clue what I was doing. This device would confront me these questions, I fear.

Nice box! If it wasn't for the zoo of machines already idling at my side, it would be on my list. Beware though of the one that does it all for it will be a poor guide when the time comes to commit to a sound and move on to building an actual song out of it. Discipline and motivation are easily diluted resources.

You'd maybe like this obscure chiptune artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RqXWJkkoJw

Slightly more in the direction of hypothetical would-be styles, minus the beats - I am mostly anti beat: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tbLt0S0W5jE&list=OLAK5uy_kY6oi...

Twas the first that came to mind, definitely not my first choice, but the man is properly mad and can indeed handle an arpeggio.

Chiptune in general is great for people who love melody. Because a great melody is a big part of what makes a good chiptune song stand out. I have been partial to Chipzel lately, for instance (this has more of a beat than your recommendation):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9TTnTu3ql_g

Other good synth heavy arpeggiators that come to mind immediately off listening to your video:

Jean Michel Jarre: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hD4KMp22jBg

William Orbit: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN4ZV9e7t0Jx-AflN9Q2wRh...

..Appreciated

Have you tried LMMS? It's not my favorite, but being 100% free and self contained (seq, fx, instruments) it's easier to install and get going with it even on an old laptop.

https://lmms.io/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6tEolVz3_4

I did. And spent a lot of time with it (and other stuff) using (or trying to use) a midi keyboard. I remember being thrilled to find it. Then the jack/alsa/pulse war began and when that came to an end, it was endless latency. Then there was the fruitless hunt for quality samples and other rabit holes.

Being not of extraordinary intelligence, I always worked more than played, by girthy margins. I gave up.

Yes, I recall the audio engine problems and the war between Alsa, Pulseaudio and Jack (and OSS before them). Luckily Pipewire solved all or nearly all those problems: it emulates other engines APIs so that programs requiring this or that engine will transparently access it instead of the real required engine. If you're running a recent distro, chances are that you already have Pipewire installed, otherwise you can install it after getting rid of the old engines.

https://docs.pipewire.org/page_overview.html

Try this out, has arpeggios as well: https://www.onemotion.com/chord-player/

You can export stuff as WAV or MIDI from the menu.

Thanks!

c64 emulator, write your own music routine with arpeggiation

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