Show HN: A Web-Based Modular Drum Machine for You to Play With | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A Web-Based Modular Drum Machine for You to Play With

noisecraft.app

214 pointsmaxime_cb34 comments

OP here. I've been working on an app/platform for people to explore musical ideas. This is a drum machine that a European friend of mine created using the app. You can press the Play button in the top-right corner to start audio playback and customize the pattern being played by clicking the red squares on the step sequencer.

If this example is too big and scary, I've made a simpler drum machine here: https://noisecraft.app/529

And many more examples can be found on the browse page: https://noisecraft.app/browse

One of my all-time favorites is this one: https://noisecraft.app/101

Disclaimer that this is made with laptop/desktop computers in mind and may not work well on mobile. The app supports binding MIDI controls by double clicking on knobs :)

Thank you internet stranger for all the work you have done there

No problem :)

I should mention that this is open source too: https://github.com/maximecb/noisecraft

Awesome! It worked quite alright on my mobile i have to say.

Nice. What kind of device are you using?

I'm on a pixel 6, using chrome and it worked rather well.

> One of my all-time favorites is this one: https://noisecraft.app/101

I have to agree. Already spent 10 minutes only with the cutoff and res.

Impressive work on the app, kudos!

do you have a tutorial how to use it?

the main page is a bit overwhelming

There is a help page to get you started: https://noisecraft.app/help

It's pretty basic but I invite people to open pull requests to improve it.

This video shows how (an older version) of the app is used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=609k3_Z-16o

I can’t seem to scroll the help on iOS. Workaround is to use reader mode in Safari.

That's pretty weird. If you or anyone has time to help me debug this, I would much appreciate your help. Might be something with the CSS.

I've used various forms of these audio tools in the past (MAX, PD) and this is a very impressive piece of work. First, I haven't seen one implemented with web technologies before, and after running through many example projects there were zero errors or issues for me. Everything seems clear and straightforward.

Nicely done, congrats on publishing this, and thanks for making it open source!

Looks quite cool application, thanks for sharing and good luck with it.

This is deeply impressive. I remain in principle opposed to web-centric audio app development, but this is probably the first one I've seen that puts a couple of small explosive devices under the foundations of that belief and gives it a good rumble. So much stuff that has been done right, and so much open-endedness to the entire system. As much as I hate to say it, amazing!

Thanks Paul. Web development definitely has its downsides. It's been challenging to get everything to work well across Chrome/Firefox and Safari because there's annoying little differences in the way they handle mouse events for example (I might blog about this at some point).

The upside though is that with an app like this, anyone can start experimenting with music and sound design from their computer, without installing anything, and you can easily show your friends the things you created (or share ideas with internet strangers).

Thank you! Musician here, this is the first music-related ShowHN I ever loved at first sight like this. Amazing, sounds awesome and looks gorgeous.

Very quickly added knobs and filters and mapped them to my NI controller with no friction. Legit acid tones within minutes.

Please share your project with acid tones! :)

Absolutely great work! UX is actully pretty good and I think it helps understanding some usefull basics. I remember using it a while ago, I think I'm guilty of this one https://noisecraft.app/113

This is amazing and I've only tried it out for about 20 minutes now. I'm just learning about MIDI and sequencers and such. Is it possible yet or will it be possible to export what we build in here to other software, or at least to an audio file?

You can save it locally to a file that's in a JSON format and easy to parse. That can allow you to run it locally, or you could build some kind of exporter. Right now to export audio you'd have to record the audio output.

Hats off. Great interface and i enjoyed making a few simple beats which is probably a very small part what the system is capable of. Thank you

Thank you. The UI is pretty basic but I tried to design it in such a way that the functionality would feel intuitive to newcomers, with as few hidden features as possible. I picked this project to share because I figured that it was very easy for people to play with by editing the pattern, without needing to understand how the sound synthesis works.

I'm not a musician or even musically inclined, but I'm really enjoying this! Thanks for creating and sharing it.

this recreation of Luke Abbott's Brazil is gorgeous https://noisecraft.app/233

Even if you don't plan to make your own tracks, this is just an amazing way to experience music - as this big beautiful machine that you can play with.

Very impressive. How long have you been working on this?

Since 2019 on and off in my spare time. I've found motivation comes and goes and I actually spent one year not working on it at all, but resumed work in 2021.

This is incredible; thank you for posting it!

An amazing project, really fun to play!

Wow, that's outstanding.

This is amazing :)

this is great thanks for sharing

doesn't work on my ipad

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