ChipWave Studio 0.2.10.0: Generators, the LCD toolbar and smarter pies

Generators, the LCD toolbar and smarter pies

0.2.10.0 brings a Generators panel with Chords | Melody | Bass tabs, an LCD toolbar with a compact Master, track pies that know the track, and a tidier Rack. Every song saves, plays and renders exactly as before. Help > Check for updates offers this version.

Download

• Windows: ChipWave-0.2.10.0-setup-x64.exe (installer) or the portable ChipWave-0.2.10.0-windows-x64.zip. The installer isn't code-signed, so SmartScreen may warn: click "More info", then "Run anyway".
• macOS (universal, unsigned: Control-click > Open): ChipWave-0.2.10.0-macos-universal.dmg (or the .zip) runs on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with macOS 11 or later. It isn't notarised, so the first time, Control-click the app and choose Open, or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/ChipWave.app. See MACOS.md.
• SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums of all eight files.

New: Generators (Chords | Melody | Bass)

• One panel, three tabs and one fixed Write card. Drag the ⠿ GENERATORS grip to move the panel; it stays on screen and reopens where you left it. A double-click on the grip puts it back at the top centre.
• Melody: a seeded tune over your chords, with Rhythm, Contour, Motif, Density, Range and Octave, plus Lock rhythm and Lock notes.
• Bass: a bass line that follows the chord roots in six styles: Root, Octave pump, Walking, Acid (accents and ties), Syncopated and Euclid.
• A big Preview pad: Preview, Dice and Another one sit in one large rounded pad beside the controls.
• Write to timeline keeps your sound: the new Melody or Bass track gets a copy of your track's instrument, with its settings and effects, so it sounds like the preview. Bass uses Fat Moog Bass (Acid Squelch for Acid) when the track has no instrument or plays drums. One Ctrl+Z takes a write back.
• Open it with Generate in the piano roll, or Chords…, Melody… or Bass… in a melodic track's pie.

New: the LCD toolbar

• A display for tempo, position, time, signature and load, in Cyan, Amber, Green, Red, Ice or your own colour.
• A compact Master meter whose popover holds the Master panel.
• Settings › Top display turns it off for the classic toolbar, which now shows the Master meter while the Clip Arranger is hidden.

New: context-aware pies and tracks

• The track pie's first ring follows the track (empty, drum or melodic): a drum track gets Swap kit, Drum pattern and Dice kit; a melodic track gets Instrument, Sounds, New pattern, Chords…, Melody… and Bass….
• A New track pie: right-click the empty space under the tracks.
• Empty tracks start empty: a new empty track has no instrument (its Rack says Drag an instrument here) and is silent until it gets one. A Drum Kit picked in the pie fills that track, and a new track with an instrument is always the active one.
• Song / Master sits at the bottom of the track list.

Changed: the Rack, the Clip Arranger and the piano roll

• Compact instrument card: a built-in instrument added from the pie or the Browser opens as its compact card, with a Drag an effect here box beside it (a click opens Browser › Effects). The Choose an instrument row is gone.
• Double-click a side tab to collapse or expand any instrument or effect card; a single click still selects it.
• Clip Arranger: a playing slot's ▶ shows ■, and a click stops it. The Arranger button (Ctrl+Shift+8) hides or shows the panel for room.
• Piano roll: Shift+arrows nudge the selection a semitone or a grid step; the octave move is now Ctrl+Up/Down.

Fixed: clean exit

• A normal exit leaves no recovery copy, so the recovery dialog only appears after a real crash.

Songs are saved exactly as in 0.2.9.0; the song format didn't change.

Before release, these checks were run on the release code (the merge into main has the same files): the automated test suite (1083 tests passed, 18 slow ones skipped, plus 3 more in a second suite), including the 11 racks acceptance tests, 6 Rack tests and 10 piano-roll copy tests; rustfmt; clippy for the Linux and Windows targets; an icon check; and a render check. The render check confirmed that the demo songs, the older-version fixture songs and the generator presets render bit-identically to the same reference renders 0.2.9.0 matched, and StringWave's Velvet Ensemble preset renders the same as before. The macOS build passed its CI build, launch smoke test and dmg check.

Full details are in the CHANGELOG.

Known limits

• The Acid bass style has accents and ties but no slides yet, because Timeline notes can't glide.
• The Mac build was tested on CI only (build, smoke test, dmg check), not on a real Mac. This Windows installer was built and checked on Linux, not run on Windows before release. Please report anything odd in an issue.

Credits

• Generators, LCD toolbar and pies by Del (postmanpat).
• Melody generator research (ideas only, no code copied): Computoser by Bozhidar Bozhanov, Godfried T. Toussaint's Euclidean rhythms (after E. Bjorklund's algorithm), total-serialism by Timo Hoogland, isobar by Daniel Jones and Emilie Gillet's open Eurorack firmware.
• Bass generator research (ideas only, no code copied): acid-banger by David Whiting (vitling), aciduino and JC-303 by midilab (its engine Open303 by Robin Schmidt), acid-test by Zack Scholl and WalkingBass by philxan.
• StringWave by Del (postmanpat), MIT.
• Oceans 11 is a chiptune arrangement of music by Martin Galway, whose Commodore 64 soundtracks for Ocean Software inspired a generation of chiptune musicians. Thank you, Martin.
• Still building on CLAP (free-audio, MIT) via clap-sys, the vst3 crate, Symphonia, egui (Emil Ernerfeldt), cpal, sfxr by DrPetter (Chip FX), Pink Trombone by Neil Thapen, the Inter, Barlow and Geist Mono fonts, and all the other Rust crate authors.

The full list is in Help > About, the README and THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.txt.

▶ Watch the promo: https://youtu.be/ygVueHcGakw · more demos and promos on YouTube

Created by Del (postmanpat). Like it? Buy me a coffee or PayPal.

Early version, so expect rough edges. GPL-3.0.