hBeat

A simple step music sequencer, written in haskell. It's a toy, but a fun one...

attachment:hbeat.png

Dependencies

This has been build with ghc-6.8, and cabal 1.2.2. An older ghc should work, but the cabal file will need some tweaking.

base
containers
old-time
mtl
OpenGL
SDL
SDL-mixer

You'll probably find that only the last two of these need to be installed manually, as the others came with my distribution.

In theory this should work on any platform where the dependencies can be satisfied. However, it's been built and tested on linux.

Download

via darcs, with the command: darcs get http://www.dockerz.net/repos/hbeat or from hackage.

or from hackage:

Instructions

1. Satisfy the dependencies above either via your platform packaging system, or via cabal.

2. Build the hbeat executable via the usual cabal incantations, something like:

cd hbeat
runghc Setup.hs configure --user --prefix $HOME
runghc Setup.hs build
sudo runghc Setup.hs install

3. Find some sound suitable sound files... I used these:

ElectricEmpireKit.h2drumkit

though I had to unpack the file, and decompress the .flac files to .wav

4. Construct a config file giving, as a minimum, the samples to use, and the number of steps. eg in sample.config:

Config {
    c_samples =
      [ "samples/ElectricEmpireKit/EE Clap.wav"
      , "samples/ElectricEmpireKit/EE Clap Hard.wav"
      , "samples/ElectricEmpireKit/EE Conga 1.wav"
      , "samples/ElectricEmpireKit/EE Conga 2.wav"
      , "samples/ElectricEmpireKit/EE Drum 1.wav"
      , "samples/ElectricEmpireKit/EE Drum 2.wav"
      ],
    c_steps = 16
}

5. Run the executable, passing the config file as the single parameter

hbeat sample.config

}

In operation:

Click on a pattern square to toggle that channel/step
Use the mouse wheel to speed up/slow down the rate
Click on one of the pattern switches at the bottom to cut to a modified pattern

To Do

These would be nice, but I may never get around to them:

Saving and loading constructed patterns
Triggering external devices
More accurate timing - some jitter in fast patterns is evident to me, so is probably blindingly obvious to more sensitive ears. I'm not sure if sound in SDL can facilitate this

Contact

Tim Docker
attachment:email.png