303Gen – 303 acid loops generator

[errozero]

Hey, I made this a few years ago. I'm suprised to see it posted here today.

It was never finished and I was meaning to add a polyfill for the missing cancelAndHoldAtTime function for Firefox.

Edit: I've just hacked in a quick polyfill

[padenot]

Sorry, I'll implement it, I had forgotten we didn't do it for erm... 9 years.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308431

[circadian]

This is really lush. Instantly it brightened up my evening. This kind of experimentation is always amazing to see.

As many seem to have mentioned below, it brings back memories of Rebirth in some ways. What it also reminds me of is the beautiful results you could have by plugging some simple modules together to create soundscapes. The limits are the things that provide some semblance of freedom and this is no different. Greetings from a fellow UK acid (techno) head! :P

[errozero]

I've just updated this to make it a little bit easier to use on a phone. The knobs are now a bit chunkier and should respond better to touch and the instruments sit vertically instead of horizontally.

[ankitg12]

I was randomly going over my past HN activity and bumped over this gem from here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38624968 and posted :)

[obiefernandez]

Hey if you don't mind updating this, can you please allow the tempo to be as high as 150 bpm?

[stephenhandley]

this is awesome. would suggest not randomizing the tempo on regenerate, and if it was already playing, when hitting regenerate, keep it playing. that would make it easy to quickly audition loops at a given tempo with a single click

[elevaet]

This is fantastic errozero nicely done! It's very musical, the drone is a nice touch and really glues it all together in a subtle way.

[elevaet]

@errorzero - if you have the time would you be able to give more information on the Scales? This section is very interesting.

[blackhaz]

This is amazing. Thanks for making it.

[Computer0]

Are you interested in open sourcing? I'd love to learn about how this was done.

[errozero]

Update: The wav export feature now renders with all parameter changes, and I've fixed a bug that excluded the drone from the export.

[djmips]

How do I export/save a pattern I like?

[errozero]

Update: wav export now added

[jackdawipper]

this thing is great. you got a version that can run as a vst or plugin?

[driggs]

Not only does this sound excellent, with three great TB-303 synth engines with a colored delay, but it's very musical. The three patterns are locked to a common scale/mode, they autogenerate with compatible and often interleaving polyrhythms, and the "instruments" - bass, lead, drone - spawn with complimentary defaults.

As a longtime synth nerd, it still amazes me to see beautiful tools like this running in a web browser.

Excellent job!

[alisonatwork]

I agree that it's neat to have software synths that can run in the browser nowadays, but this isn't really a good TB-303 emulation. The accent doesn't have a slow enough attack to create the "wow" effect, which is a fundamental aspect of getting any random acid line to sound properly 303ish. Not to take away from what it is, but for a synth that has been cloned and emulated as often as the TB-303, your description is overselling it a bit.

[satyrun]

This is absolutely awesome. The multiple lines really make it unique.

I really never heard the enigmatic scale that much but it sounds wonderful. The only thing I would want to hear are melodic and harmonic minor modes.

[nzoschke]

Fun. I love the UI style.

See also the Endless Acid Banger:

https://www.vitling.xyz/toys/acid-banger/

And happy Acid August!

Every year we celebrate the 303 with a club night in SF.

https://ra.co/events/2208013

[lynx97]

Oh, that is neat! Vitling also makes nice music.

https://music.vitling.xyz/music

[errozero]

I wish I could attend! I'm in the UK.

[bityard]

Oh this is lovely! I love the 303, played with ReBirth a LOT and built several x0xb0xes back in the day.

About half of the patterns it generated were something I could listen to for a while. Makes me want to get back into electronic music again.

[ZFH]

cries nostalgia tears in Propellerhead Rebirth

Thanks.

[racl101]

I remember using that one time to make music for a presentation for a power point slide. We burnt the music onto a CD and brought in a boombox. I it was for my accounting class. It was kinda cool.

[bitbasher]

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to get into electronic music production?

I am working on a small game and want to make some jungle dnb tracks for it.

I grabbed Renoise and follow some tutorials and stuff. Is there a better way to go about it?

[bagful]

Learn by imitation ; if you want to make DnB tracks, try and inevitably fail to recreate existing DnB that you admire. With time your failures-to-imitate will congeal into a novel and personal style.

[gregsadetsky]

This book [0] is full of great creative strategies to make electronic music, ways of getting started/unstuck, is generally not that tied to Ableton the software (even though they are the publisher), and is free to partially peruse online.

I’d recommend getting a physical copy once/if you find it useful. It’s been a really great help in getting over white page/DAW syndrome. Truly great and full of smart/useful gems.

[0] https://makingmusic.ableton.com/

[milchek]

You could grab some sample or instrument packs that will help you approximate the sound you are after more quickly.

Baby Audio has a pretty nice VST instrument and 90s preset pack that might have the sound you are looking for - have a listen here https://static1.squarespace.com/static/561e2985e4b08862a3496...

On a side note - if you are looking for people to help out I’d love to have a crack, also looking to learn.

[kookamamie]

When clicking Regenerate, it would be great if the sequence kept playing if Play was active at that time.

[dev0p]

Best find on HN in the past year, no joke.

Is this open source? I'd love to tweak it a bit, I wonder if it modulation can be automated somehow, so it can be kept in the background as it fiddles with patterns on its own and explores the musical landscape. Or add a save/load feature, for both songs and patterns...

[timdeve]

This is really lovely.

Would be great as an inspiration tool if it would make a little visualisation of the notes/accent/slides on a piano roll.

I can read the JSON meanwhile but just an idea.

[errozero]

I've just added a wav export feature. Currently it only exports with the knob positions as they are when the pattern first generates. You can choose how long the exported audio is.

It's a bit of a hack that re-opens the app in an iframe in the background using an offline audio context.

I'll come back to it at some point and make the export pick up the knob positions but I don't have time right now.

[djmips]

Thanks

[quatonion]

It's brilliant. Love it. I want to know more about the generation, it looks very well thought out. Worth an article in itself.

[errozero]

Thank you! It's been a few years so I can't remember exactly without reading through the code but it's something like this:

It uses notes from the selected scale and octave (from the dropdowns). If the pattern is of an even length, say 16, it will split it into 4 chunks of 4, then randomly decide if it should generate new data for the chunk or copy the previous chunk. It uses the repeat slider for the probability on this.

It randomly applies the 303 modifiers (up, down, accent, slide) using probability set with the sliders on the pattern tab.

There's also an 'empty' slider which sets the probablity of an empty note appearing in a chunk.

[mxuribe]

Also within ungoogled chromium, upon hitting the "stop" button, it seems to keep playing either an additional lower-volume track, or some long delayed echo....but hitting the "stop" button several times eventually stops playback. Even still, the concept is pretty neat!

[mtts]

Everybody needs a 303.

[dep_b]

Had tons of fun with https://roland50.studio/ the other day. And I have a lot of the actual devices, but still to just jam a bit without going through all of the set up now nice.

[peterldowns]

Doesn't work in firefox, console tells me

Uncaught TypeError: a.frequency.cancelAndHoldAtTime is not a function

Pretty fun in Chrome!

[oasisaimlessly]

Apparently fixed mow: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44812638

[serpent]

Lovely! Is the source code public?

[errozero]

No, but the timekeeping part of it is. I put that code into a small library to use in my music apps: https://github.com/errozero/beatstepper

[xxr]

Right off the bat I get something that sounds like something Frank Klepacki would have used in the Red Alert 2 soundtrack (likely pulled from Methods of Mayhem). Nice.

[Eisenstein]

I can finally be Richie Hawtin.

* https://youtu.be/5L0VP7nAZls?t=2713

[efields]

What would be the level of effort to get some midi transport controls and BPM sync in here, now that browsers support MIDI to some degree?

[octatrack]

Love it. MIDI sync and start/stop functionality would be great to connect it to other gear/software!