[HN Gopher] Tek - A music making program for 24-bit Unicode term...
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       Tek - A music making program for 24-bit Unicode terminals
        
       Author : smartmic
       Score  : 163 points
       Date   : 2025-05-15 19:56 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (codeberg.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (codeberg.org)
        
       | montag wrote:
       | Really awesome UI. Is there a quick YouTube demo?
        
       | neilv wrote:
       | In case anyone else wondered, it doesn't seem to involve Tek
       | (Tektronix) terminal graphics. Maybe the name was an homage?
        
       | Sharlin wrote:
       | Oh no, you're supposed to have the channels on the x-axis and
       | time on the y-axis ;) _mutters about good old days_
        
       | MarcelOlsz wrote:
       | I love the top down tracker UI. For some more you can look at
       | Aphex Twin using PlayerPRO [0] and Hitori Tori using Renoise [1]
       | 
       | [0] https://vimeo.com/223378825
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnJY5u6cC7A
       | 
       | Both are mindblowing.
        
         | genewitch wrote:
         | I bought playerpro and we used it for a while, been a long time
         | since I thought of it. I just checked my old Mac CD case and
         | it's not in there, oh well. We also switched to reason around
         | version 3-5.
        
           | MarcelOlsz wrote:
           | If you ever do find that disc I'd love to buy it from you
           | lol.
        
             | genewitch wrote:
             | at the very least, you've made up my mind that i need to
             | photograph every 4 disc page in all of my cases, and label
             | the cases. Right now it's like "MissingHandleCase" and
             | "RightLockBrokenCase" and "LocksIntactWithStrapCase" and
             | "LargestUnderBedCase"!
             | 
             | I do have discs from that era, as i have 680x0 Mac Performa
             | OS discs - the ones that are silver and black with pixel /
             | icon art of the mac smiley face on them. When i still had
             | an actual SATA optical drive on a machine i was
             | contemplating indexing all of my optical media. I started
             | with some software on windows and it wasn't very good, i
             | looked around for other options and came up with nothing.
             | So i rely on my (admittedly non-perfect) memory of what i
             | had on disc, up to ~30 years ago.
             | 
             | I may as well admit: I tried to "patent" an optical media
             | "case" that mechanically held the middle of the disc, like
             | a laptop cdrom spindle does, but with a button to release
             | them so you didn't need to "bend" the disc to remove it. I
             | had cad drawings and everything. But the vaultz cases are
             | "good enough" for my usage - where i rarely, if ever,
             | remove discs from their sleeves. As long as the cases
             | aren't jostled regularly, and never left open and exposed
             | to dust, and kept in a controlled environment (not too hot,
             | not too cold, not too wet, not too dry), i don't forsee any
             | issues from the _storage_ of the discs. Whether or not the
             | foil layer or glue or any of that holds up - well, my
             | optical disc case design was actually gasket sealed, and
             | had something like a Schraeder valve to pump air out, or
             | nitrogen in; this probably would have made the foil and
             | glue last longer.
             | 
             | I had completely forgotten i had invented that until i
             | started commenting on the longevity of my optical media.
             | Sorry. Amateur archivist, here. Nice to meet you.
        
           | duskwuff wrote:
           | It's open-source now, but never made the transition to 64-bit
           | APIs.
           | 
           | https://sourceforge.net/projects/playerpro/
        
         | montag wrote:
         | nit: Renoise; good stuff, thanks for sharing.
        
         | alisonatwork wrote:
         | This program doesn't look top down to me, it seems like the
         | main sequencing interface is piano roll, although the sample
         | editing looks tracker-inspired. It'll be interesting to see
         | what people do with it. Maybe fans of piano roll will find a
         | lightweight way to get their ideas down that feels simpler than
         | a full Ableton setup?
         | 
         | For me I still find piano roll awkward to read. I can't
         | visualize what the music is going to sound like the way I can
         | with a tracker pattern. Perhaps it's because my eyes need to
         | scan left and right and up and down too much to see what each
         | note is? Let's not even get into the problem of having effects
         | configured on a totally different screen. When I transitioned
         | from tracker to hardware and later to Ableton I felt like I
         | wasn't really writing music any more, I was just rearranging
         | sounds till they eventually turned into music. It made for
         | perhaps more surprising and interesting results, but I never
         | really got back the feeling of control and finesse that I had
         | with trackers.
        
       | tzmlab wrote:
       | There's demo video at
       | https://v.basspistol.org/w/eUCnnNJugRZ5haqyuYQ2CK
        
       | yahoozoo wrote:
       | Are there any DAWs that support VIM keybinds?
        
         | alisonatwork wrote:
         | I remember seeing one a while ago, and a quick websearch leads
         | me to this Reaper plugin: https://github.com/gwatcha/reaper-
         | keys
         | 
         | I think I wouldn't hate a modal tracker nowadays. In the old
         | days when everyone had gigantic keyboards it didn't seem so bad
         | to depend on numpad and F keys and so on, but nowadays it might
         | be cleaner to be more vim-like.
        
       | RIMR wrote:
       | For the non-arch users, the build script has a typo:
       | 
       | Don't use bin/, use build/
        
         | woolion wrote:
         | The AUR package is also broken, it doesn't fetch the submodule
         | before trying to build.
         | 
         | It would be better to just suggest using the static build, as
         | it works OotB.
        
       | chaosprint wrote:
       | Neat! For those who prefer a more direct, terminal-based approach
       | to making music with code, check out also Glicol-CLI:
       | 
       | https://github.com/glicol/glicol-cli
        
       | stuaxo wrote:
       | This title makes me desire a hardware 24 bit unicode terminal.
        
       | cocodill wrote:
       | the binary is kind of broken, output is quite cryptic:
       | 
       | Error: ClientError(ClientStatus(FAILURE | SERVER_FAILED))
        
       | __m wrote:
       | Was hoping to see a tracker, I think that would be a better fit
       | for the terminal
        
         | wormius wrote:
         | It's interesting a lot of us saw this and thought "Tracker" and
         | I googled to see if there was a TUI tracker, and on simple
         | search I don't see one. It seems like that's an interesting
         | idea waiting to be made...
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-16 23:01 UTC)