[HN Gopher] LudoTune, a 3D music sequencer in the browser
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LudoTune, a 3D music sequencer in the browser
Author : diibv
Score : 130 points
Date : 2021-08-23 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ludotune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ludotune.com)
| parsecs wrote:
| Does anybody know of anything that can make music like this
| without being 3D? Like, anything more "practical" in a sense? I
| think some of the tunes here are really nice.
| dyltur wrote:
| A few people have told me it reminds them of Orca, although I
| haven't tried it out yet myself:
| https://hundredrabbits.itch.io/orca
| [deleted]
| bruce343434 wrote:
| The program doesn't really run at a constant rate and keeps
| stuttering so the rythms are all over the place. Too bad because
| otherwise it seems like a cool concept.
| dyltur wrote:
| Ah I'm sorry you're having that problem. The audio is scheduled
| accurately with the web audio api (using Tone.js), but on some
| devices performance could still be an issue. The best
| experience is definitely with Chrome or Firefox on
| desktop/laptop (Safari or mobile devices may not work as well).
| If you think your device should be capable of running it
| smoothly (or the frame rate is good, but the audio isn't) it
| could help me out to know which OS and Browser you're using.
| glenneroo wrote:
| This link posted above stutters reliably on my box, always at
| the same spots: https://go.ludotune.com/hui4
|
| Win10, FF 91.0.1 64-bit
|
| Stutters at ~24 seconds, ~32, maybe 1:30ish, 5 seconds after
| that... then I lost track. Not very often but when it does
| it's very jarring. Happens if it's running in the foreground
| or background, even if I'm not moving around or anything,
| just listening with tab in focus.
| dyltur wrote:
| Thanks for this! The detail is much appreciated, I'll
| investigate.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Listen the fact you can get good and compatible experience on
| Tone.js at any level is hugely impressive!
|
| I have given up on any Web Audio that is not a single
| AudioWorklet with some kind of self contained wasm ugen
| hamaluik wrote:
| This had a surprisingly emotional effect on me. Something about
| watching and figuring out the patterns the music would take and
| loop back on itself etc engaged me in a way I can hardly believe.
| 5 stars.
| isaacimagine wrote:
| This is beautiful! Just looking at then listening to the featured
| songs is so much fun :)
| jayeshsalvi wrote:
| Great concept. Making music is hard. Such experiments with visual
| manipulation of music can help make it easier.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Should we try to make it easier?
| Cycl0ps wrote:
| Are you proposing making it easier causes some detriment?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| No. I'm asking why we want it to be easier.
|
| You can make getting from A to B easier (and faster), by
| replacing walking with cycling. You make it even easier
| with a bus, and easier still with a car. In some
| circumstances, this is valuable and should be welcomed. But
| it's a mistake to think that moving from A to B in a car is
| actually the same experience as doing so on foot.
|
| I'm suggesting that this might be true of making music
| also.
| vosper wrote:
| This isn't going to replace other ways of making music,
| in the same way that people still walk and cycle even
| though cars exist
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I wasn't suggesting that. My remark/question was about
| the general idea that we should try to make making music
| easier.
| dkersten wrote:
| An aside from my own life that I found interesting: for a
| long time I thought _" surely there's a way,
| electronically or otherwise, to have an easier more
| ergonomic interface to making guitar-like music than a
| guitar"_. Then I learned to actually play the guitar and
| realised just how much control over the sound you have
| and how expressive it is and realised that replacing that
| with something easier would actually be pretty damn hard.
| Cycl0ps wrote:
| I can agree that this is a differet experience than other
| ways of composing, but I think that's a good thing.
| Walking from A-B let's you experience the travel in
| detail, driving let's you visit more places in the same
| time. Both have their benefits, but you can't say one is
| better than the other without a specific use case in
| mind. In a more literal view, LudoTune offers a set of
| conviences and constraints that aren't had with other
| systems. Combined, those changes will encourage
| exploration and the growth of new ideas.
|
| While it was before my time, I'm sure the development of
| synthesizers and sampling audio tracks were considered by
| some to be shortening the travel-time between A and B,
| but those became influential in modern music. Maybe this
| isn't the next big thing in music, but it could be, and
| I'm curious to see how far it can be taken.
| filoleg wrote:
| >I'm suggesting that this might be true of making music
| also.
|
| No, it isn't, because unlike with getting from point A to
| point B, the end result isn't always the same with music
| making.
|
| Music, in that aspect, is more like writing code or
| visual arts. Printing and photography becoming widely
| available didn't make visual arts worse, they did the
| opposite, because instead of focusing on just technical
| proficiency, the art was forced to move in a more
| creative direction.
|
| With programming, us not punching cards with code and not
| using assembly as the primary language didn't make things
| worse, it just allowed us to go on a higher level and
| create things that would be unthinkable without that.
|
| Same with music making. Being able to record a virtual
| orchestra in your bedroom studio doesn't make music as
| art worse, it opens up way more room for things that
| weren't even possible before. Just by definition, when it
| becomes much easier and really accessible to record
| something in your bedroom, which previously only a few
| extremely rich people in the world with tons of
| experienced staff could do, it allows for art to evolve
| faster and move forward just by the sheer drive of all
| the people who now have access to contribute to it.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| One of my go-to examples in this domain is to look back
| at the career of the composer Steve Reich. Living in NYC,
| it wasn't so difficult for him to find performers to
| realize the (then radical) musical ideas he was
| experimenting with in the late 1960s and early 1970s. If
| Reich had been living in Smalltownsville, SomeState it
| could have been much, much more challenging (arguably
| close to impossible). So in this sense, the accessibility
| of contemporary digital audio workstation technology [0]
| makes it more feasible for anyone with musical ideas to
| explore them, and we should celebrate this.
|
| However, the path that Reich did actually follow
| underscores the senses in which making music is so often
| a _social_ activity, and there is no doubt based on
| interviews with Reich that having /choosing to work with
| other human musicians changed the evolution of his music.
| Not everyone likes his music, and of those who do, some
| might have preferred the direction it might have gone had
| Reich been an Ableton Live user. Nevertheless, I continue
| to believe that music as a social activity is critical to
| almost all good-to-great music, and that contemporary
| technology frequently undermines that.
|
| [0] perhaps paradoxically, I am the author of just such a
| piece of technology.
| filoleg wrote:
| >I continue to believe that music as a social activity is
| critical to almost all good-to-great music, and that
| contemporary technology frequently undermines that.
|
| Agreed on it being a social activity, but disagreed on
| contemporary approaches undermining the social aspect of
| it. Sure, it gives you an option to be more asocial when
| it comes to making music, but it also gives you ability
| to be more social than ever before.
|
| Ableton Live has a remote collaboration feature now, so
| you can work on music together with people who are
| thousands of miles away from you. Quite a bunch of
| software solutions are available that make jamming
| together and recording music with people separated from
| you (by distance) easy and fun. Something like Splice
| Studio[0] is a godsend for remote DAW sync and
| collaboration.
|
| 0. https://splice.com/blog/how-to-use-splice-studio/
| ronyeh wrote:
| Yes, we should try to make everything easier!
|
| I'm glad we have cars because sometimes I just want to get
| from A to B fast. (Maybe someone just wants to enjoy making
| some light music through a fake book or light up keys.)
|
| Other times, I enjoy hiking half a day because you see a lot
| of interesting things along the way, and the experience
| itself is rewarding for other reasons. (Like, conquering a
| challenging etude works my brain in a certain way and is
| satisfying.)
|
| Tons of people will opt to make music via the easier option.
| But many will still try the difficult path, because it is
| rewarding and your skills compound over time.
|
| And sometimes, a person who first does it the easy way
| decides that he/she wants to do it the harder way. People
| like to learn!
| sj4nz wrote:
| That was cool. It reminded me of Orca, but in 3D.
|
| https://metasyn.github.io/learn-orca/
| nayuki wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimTunes ;
| https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=SimTunes was a similar
| 2D music sequencer game.
| garrettjoecox wrote:
| I have had such a blast playing with this for the last week,
| reminds me a lot of what you are able to do with noteblocks in
| Minecraft.
|
| Here's my newest creation https://go.ludotune.com/hui4
| zabatuvajdka wrote:
| Nicely done!
|
| It's a neat game. I wouldn't call it a great tool because it's
| impossible for me to interpret the music from the blocks
| themselves without playing it. That being said I'm sure that
| wasn't the original intent of the app!
|
| 2D info is much easier for me to decipher.
| dkersten wrote:
| Yeah, its cool, its fun, but its not _useful_ for actual real
| world composition, since its rather convoluted to work with
| and this final piece is incomprehensible, especially compared
| to a paino roll or similar.
|
| But, of course, like you, I assume that's not the goal so it
| doesn't matter. It is cool and it is fun and that's all
| that's important.
|
| And I'm very impressed by this example! garrettjoecox did a
| great job.
| dyltur wrote:
| I'm biased of course, but I think there are actually music-
| makers who enjoy novel and non-linear sequencers like this,
| particularly for idea generation / experimentation. Not
| saying it would have mainstream appeal, but there are
| considerations other than interpretability for some people.
| E.g. Conditional logic and probability cubes let you do
| things that can't be done on a normal piano roll. At least
| that's why I added MIDI output - for the people who want to
| connect it to their DAW or other MIDI device.
| kobalsky wrote:
| what song is this?
| evanwalsh wrote:
| "Mad World" by Tears for Fears
| codetrotter wrote:
| I think the Riverdale cover of it is more known among a lot
| of people.
|
| https://music.apple.com/album/mad-world-feat-k-j-apa-
| camila-...
|
| It seems to be the version that they sample from in meme
| videos on YouTube and TikTok where they try to express a
| feeling of sadness either in honesty or ironically. Where
| they put the video in grayscale mode and put part of this
| song over it.
| dyltur wrote:
| Hey everyone, I'm the developer. Thanks for the nice comments!
| Happy to answer any questions.
| marapuru wrote:
| I love the visual elements that drag the music out of the
| audiospectrum. As a visual person this speaks to me so much
| more than the traditional 2D way of representing music. It's
| really cool to see songs visually laid out in a 3D space.
|
| What was your original intent with this project? I feel this
| would work very well for educational aspects, slightly
| comparable to sonic-pi, especially when it comes to how easy it
| is to make something nice.
| dyltur wrote:
| Thanks that's great to hear! Initially I thought it would be
| a game/toy just because I personally thought it would be fun
| to build and share music like this. The bulk of early users
| seem to enjoy it just for this as well, although I have had
| some requests to add more utility for music-makers (some want
| a LudoTune VST and others potentially a desktop or iPad app).
| The educational angle has also been brought up a few times
| and I think that'd be great, so I'll probably be exploring
| that further too.
| lucasgw wrote:
| Ok - ummm... how do you rotate the shape? :)
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Okay, that's silly but also amazing. And interesting! It brings
| out the structural form of compositions.
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(page generated 2021-08-23 23:01 UTC)