Bytebeat is the name of type of music made from math.
You provide a function who's only input is time t and from that write some code to generate a sound.
In this particular case t is an 8000hz timer that counts up. For example
sin(t) * 127 + 127
You can choose traditional bytebeat where the output of your function is expected to be 0 to 255 or you can choose floatbeat where the output is expected to be -1 to +1.
Functions are just plain JavaScript though sin, cos, tan, floor, ceil and int will automatically be converted to Math.sin, Math.cos, Math.tan, Math.floor, Math.ceil, and Math.floor respectively.
Click here to try your hand at Bytebeat.
Here are a few sample songs
- http://goo.gl/KABRP
- http://goo.gl/V5Mrl
- http://goo.gl/qrAkf
- http://goo.gl/w3ugG
- http://goo.gl/NRwRT
- http://goo.gl/ObMwR
- http://goo.gl/Arptn
- http://goo.gl/pD3lx
- http://goo.gl/MuQWe
- http://goo.gl/rFNPL
- http://goo.gl/lQyDd
- http://goo.gl/6Uz0d
There 2 modes
- bytebeat: Your expression is expected to generate byte values from 0 to 255
- floatbeat: Your expression is expected to generate float values from -1.0 to 1.0
- Infix: Standard expressions eg. "(t * 2) / 4"
- Postfix(rpn): Reverse Polish Notation eg "t 2 * 4 /"
Infix is standard JavaScript so all Math functions are available. Most math functions you can drop the "Math." part. In other words
sin(t)
is the same as
Math.sin(t)
Postfix requires that each element have at least one space between it.
t2* // BAD!
t 2 * // Good!
Comments can be both // or /* */ style
There are several extra inputs available
The mouse position is available as mouseX and mouseY
sin(t * mouseX * 0.001) + cos(t * mouseY * 0.003)
The size of the window is available width and height
The orientation of a device may be available as tiltX and tiltY.
(sin(t * 0.1 * tiltX) + cos(t * tiltY * 0.07)) * 0.5
Also note, using the comma operator you can write fairly arbitrary code.
http://goo.gl/IZVBS
Check out http://canonical.org/~kragen/bytebeat/ and be sure follow the many links.
- Paul Pridham for his Glitch Machine iOS Bytebeat program.
- Mr.Doob for his GLSL Sandbox where much of this code was cribbed.
- Nathan Rugg for his LZMA-JS library.
- Darius Bacon for his bytebeat program and for tips and examples to test it.