
Show HN: Tones.fm – Make synth music - tonesfm
https://www.tones.fm/
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raphlinus
I'd love to hear more about what technology was used to make this. I actually
have a web port of my DX7 emulator, but I don't promote it much. I've also
been experimenting more recently with a Rust code base for synthesis and am
considering picking that up again.

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eat_veggies
It looks like handwritten jquery. I beautified the javascript:

[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/23bff2f5006c675f9cff49f752...](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/23bff2f5006c675f9cff49f75245d5b5)

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throwaway66666
This is pretty neat! Fatigued after so many "this vs that" framework talk
nowadays, very refreshing to see someone just using what they feel comfortable
with and building an all around awesome project.

Just honest high-quality craftmanship and lots of fun :) Props to the creator.

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kasbah
I love these kinds of grid step sequencers and have had an obsession with them
since I saw a Monome as a teenager. I tried to make my own capacitive touch
hardware once that could work as one. Eventually I just settled on writing a
MIDI Node.js one which works with a Novation Launchpad [1].

This one is really well done and gives me some ideas. Would be cool if it took
advantage of bigger screens.

[1]: [https://github.com/kasbah/launch-step](https://github.com/kasbah/launch-
step)

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arsalanb
I don't know the first thing about music, but this was still fun to play
around with. The front end is a work of art. Looks solid and robust.

I tried it on my iPhone (in Safari) it made a sort of clicking sound with
every "beat" or whatever it's called when the line passes over the circles.
Other than that, looks great even on iPhone.

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ClintEhrlich
I found this incredibly soothing, maybe even therapeutic.

Bravo. Wonderful execution by the creator.

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stfwn
Cool! I made
[https://www.tones.fm/stfwn/5-min](https://www.tones.fm/stfwn/5-min) in 5 min!
I really like the simplicity. I subscribed and I'm curious to see how you will
add more features while sticking with the look and feel that makes this
original and nice.

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byproxy
Very nice. It'd be cool to add other scales beyond pentatonic, to.

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kenning
This is pretty incredible, i love playing with single tone things like this
and this is a particularly nice one. It's also fascinating to see how the
magic almost completely goes away when i switch to a major key

nice ageisopolis track in there too

Slight nitpick, the sound clips if there's too much going on at once.

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elialbert
having done some stuff with webaudio api I doubt there's much can be done
about this right now.

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vaillancourtmax
Couldn't reducing the gain fix that?

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wanda
Maybe I'm blind, but is there a way to create an original composition? I tried
clicking "Create" but it doesn't seem to do anything. Is it also possible to
save the music we create?

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duncans
Edit > Clear

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wanda
Yes, I noticed that, but then the music I create is still classified as a
remix of the original track that I cleared.

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ouid
when you go to save, you can change the name. This is sufficient, I believe.

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staafl
Getting an "The AudioContext was not allowed to start. It must be resume (or
created) after a user gesture on the page." error on Chrome 67.0.3368.1 and no
sound is heard. Works great on Firefox - great job.

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prayerslayer
Nice idea to provide only notes from a chord! It's really motivating if you
never made music before. ("Wow I can do this!")

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mapmap
Would you mind explaining the mechanics of this in more detail? I too was
wondering why whatever I did seemed to sound good.

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alkonaut
All the notes are from a single scale. You pick one of two available scales,
the "major" and "minor", which in this case are the _Pentatonic_ major and
minor scales respectively. That it has 5 tones is obvious since you might
notice that each tone is repeated 5 steps above, in the next octave up.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale#Major_pentato...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale#Major_pentatonic_scale)

The reason this scale is so popular for this type of music device -
"penatatonic sequencers" \- is because it's almost impossible to screw up. So
you could describe using the pentatonic scale as removing some of the
opportunity for making the music more interesting, but in return you almost
completely eliminate any opportunity to make it "sound bad". Any note can
follow any note in the pentatonic scale, which is why "randomize" or handing
it to a child (which is the same thing) works as a creation method.

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InitialLastName
FYI: There's a bug in the reverb processing; if you listen to the "Ambient"
preset for long enough the sound will start clipping in and out and eventually
disappear altogether. As soon as I bring Reverb->Amount above zero, I get some
nasty quantization noise (mostly in the right signal) and left signal pops in
and out with some nasty noise around it.

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huskyr
Really nice, and works excellent on mobile. One minor grudge: the notes seem
to be just a tad small for touch on mobile.

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arvinsim
Nice! The minimalistic UI just encourages you to experiment and just click
things around.

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erAck
This is fun, but (at least for me) there's awful scratch noise when each
note's sound starts playing, which unfortunately doesn't make it enjoyable at
all.

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novaleaf
if this can help: for me, this happens when i turn the buffer on my sound card
down (to avoid playback delay when using a midi keyboard)

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tonesfm
Thanks for the comments everyone :)

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remir
This is simply great! I love how I can simply input some "notes" and make
something decent. Much easier than learning piano!

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whoisjuan
Added this as a home screen icon on my iPhone... Barely indistinguishable from
a native app downloaded from the App Store. Excellent!

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zengid
Beautiful design! Having trouble with the sound working on Android in Chrome.
Looks like site might be getting hugged to death, too.

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thomastjeffery
Neat!

The only major issue is that some UI breaks as soon as a new measure begins.

It would also be really neat to use scales other than pentatonic.

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j4mie
Very much like a Yamaha Tenori-On. Nice work.

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sgnl
The Tenori-On iOS app saved my wallet and probably one of the most used apps
on my device (other than "Dungeon Raid", a match-three game with RPG
elements). $20 dollars for a software version of a $1,000 instrument? YES
PLEASE

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tjr225
A lot of fun. I would add an editing mode where you can switch between
patterns without playing them.

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ourarash
It was very fun to play with. Is it gonna be available as an app too?

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michaelmior
Looks like it would be cool, but consistently crashes the tab for me in
Firefox on Windows 10.

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ouid
There needs to be a compiled version of these songs, I think.

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chrisweekly
Bravo! Thank you for making this, and for sharing it. So cool.

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cup-of-tea
That was enjoyable.

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pouta
Such a soothing experience!

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tonetheman
Wonderful. Very cool.

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stevehiehn
Really awesome!

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saaaaaam
Beautiful

