I've been making music with synthesizers for a long time, and I always saw great ideas in DAW tools and in hardware, but never all of those ideas in one place. I wanted more music theory awareness in my compositional tools, like the ability to access easy scale changes. I wanted patterns to be symlinks, and to make it easy to have multiple patterns in a single clip.
I wrote Warp to make it happen. Today there's a Python API that can make full songs, and the work on the UI is getting started, which will be available this Fall.
The Python API doesn't technically even require using a loop, so it should be accessible to programmers who aren't Python experts.
Let me know if there are questions, and if you'd like updates, you can also follow @warpseq on twitter.
Hello there. This looks interesting, but I think that from a promotional standpoint, your website needs screenshots or a video of the user interface for your program. It's cool that you can make this music with it, but I would like to quickly get a feel for how your program is used.
IMO, most people will want to see that before they invest time reading documentation or downloading and installing your software.
oh cool, I had a friend who mentioned (I think another one though) program that generated tiny MIDI clips. That would be great for dragging into a DAW and repositioning them around. Nice!
I tried to use this, but the PYTHONPATH weirdness was a minor impediment, I tried to actually install it but setup.py is missing a quote, installing it doesn't actually install the notation module, and then finally relenting and redefining PYTHONPATH runs to the point where it tells me I need a MIDI device, and I don't have one.
Can I not just make it output sound to my computer speakers?
A MIDI sequencer just outputs MIDI instructions, it doesn't generate sound unless it implements a synth (sound generator) of some sort.
You'd need to install something like loopMIDI, and direct the output of the sequencer to the input of a VST host, where you can load whatever synths you want.
This looks a little like the NDLR from Conductive Labs. The NDLR is a hardware box. While you can enter chord progressions into it, it's intended for live performance where you enter chords as it plays them.
My issue with the NDLR is that its sequences have no random variation. If you don't keep tweaking the parameters ("noodling"), it starts sounding repetitive quickly.
Any idea whether Warp would run on MicroPython? The NDLR, or a box like it, might make a nice UI.
Yeah, I don't know what it would take. We're currently using very few dependencies so... maybe? Shoot me an email using the links on the homepage if you like and we can continue the conversation.
"music theory aware"? Like...it snaps sequences to scales like every other decent sequencer? I can't actually tell why this is useful from the front page description.
Nope! With those systems you have no way to input accidentals. Here, notes are entered in scale degree, so if you say "4 5 6" you get the 4th, 5th, and 6th scale note, every time. If you later want to transpose to Eb Pentatonic, everything remains musical. The arp can also tranpose by scale notes instead of just semitones too.
Also, there's quite a bit more, all in the docs. There's a ton more there.
mpdehaan2|5 years ago
I've been making music with synthesizers for a long time, and I always saw great ideas in DAW tools and in hardware, but never all of those ideas in one place. I wanted more music theory awareness in my compositional tools, like the ability to access easy scale changes. I wanted patterns to be symlinks, and to make it easy to have multiple patterns in a single clip.
I wrote Warp to make it happen. Today there's a Python API that can make full songs, and the work on the UI is getting started, which will be available this Fall.
The Python API doesn't technically even require using a loop, so it should be accessible to programmers who aren't Python experts.
Let me know if there are questions, and if you'd like updates, you can also follow @warpseq on twitter.
tachyonbeam|5 years ago
IMO, most people will want to see that before they invest time reading documentation or downloading and installing your software.
Just my two cents! I hope this is helpful.
dangoor|5 years ago
[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/irijule/theoryboard-thy...
Mizza|5 years ago
I've build a much cruder version that I use for generating chord sequences to bring into DAWS:
https://github.com/Miserlou/chords2midi
It even has voice leading, which required translating an "algorithm" written in German in the 1800's!
mpdehaan2|5 years ago
StavrosK|5 years ago
Can I not just make it output sound to my computer speakers?
jestar_jokin|5 years ago
You'd need to install something like loopMIDI, and direct the output of the sequencer to the input of a VST host, where you can load whatever synths you want.
kbob|5 years ago
My issue with the NDLR is that its sequences have no random variation. If you don't keep tweaking the parameters ("noodling"), it starts sounding repetitive quickly.
Any idea whether Warp would run on MicroPython? The NDLR, or a box like it, might make a nice UI.
jsilence|5 years ago
mpdehaan2|5 years ago
LeoPanthera|5 years ago
TaupeRanger|5 years ago
mpdehaan2|5 years ago
Also, there's quite a bit more, all in the docs. There's a ton more there.
henearkr|5 years ago
mpdehaan2|5 years ago
See some examples at https://bitbucket.org/laserllama/warpseq/src/master/examples...
And then you can imagine the web interface growing up around those simple lists of strings.
kazinator|5 years ago
A much better idea is to represent intervals internally in such a way that unison is zero.
The jury may be out on how to enumerate items in a sequence, but a delta offset must be zero-based. That is simply not negotiable.
Western music theory is crazy.
Come on: every seven diatonic notes, we get another octave? What? And then we need a "rule of nine" for inverting an interval?
adamnemecek|5 years ago
main_gi|5 years ago