LiveTracker

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                                                  :            \/           v.3030

An entry for the Phoenix Phrenzy contest.

First there was Amiga Soundtracker and ProTracker. Then DOS FastTracker. Now LiveView LiveTracker.

Overview

LiveTracker is a fun attempt to capture the quirkyness of early music trackers. It uses LiveView for the user interface to capture notes being played from a computer keyboard while displaying the song sequence realtime. Unlike traditional trackers, LiveTracker does not load samples from a module file (yet?). Instead, it uses a separate websocket connection /tone to send one-way messages to Tone.js on the client side to play samples in realtime (or close to it).

Note: Safari audio playback requires the page to be clicked first see issue #1

How to play

A demo can be viewed at https://livetracker.kevinkoltz.com.

Notes can be played using built-in keyboard mappings:

• Play white notes C4-C5 with keyboard keys a-k starting at the 4th octave.
• Black keys are w (Cb4), e (Db4), t (Fb4), y (Gb4), and u (Ab4).
• Octave can be shifted up or down using z and x, respectively.
• Select a track (instrument) using the left or right arrow keys.
• Press m to clear notes in the selected track (while recording).

Font and Sample Credits

• Commodore 64 Pixelized Free Font by Devin Cook
• Pack of Free 8 Bit, Chippy, Glitchy, Lo-fi Sounds

Wishlist

• Multiple users using Phoenix.Presence
  • Ability to record notes from multiple computers simultaneously
• Support for patterns (series of notes) and song edit (arrangement of patterns)
• Scale selector (shifts played notes to nearest key in scale)
• Ability to save sequences (maybe .mods too for export), along with autosave (for when things crash)
• VU Meters
  • Tone.FFT
  • or, just use a CSS animation when notes are played
• Support uploading and parsing of MOD files
  • The Amiga MOD Format
  • MOD Music File Format
• Sample/Instrument edit (Tone.js has many options)
• Update status when LiveView loses connection
• Fix [initial playback with Safari][#1]

Deployment

How you deploy your app is up to you. A couple of the easiest options are:

• Heroku (instructions)
• Gigalixir (doesn't limit number of connections)
• Render

The Usual README Content

To start your Phoenix server:

• Install dependencies with mix deps.get
• Create and migrate your database with mix ecto.setup
• Install Node.js dependencies with cd assets && npm install && cd -
• Start Phoenix endpoint with mix phx.server

Now you can visit localhost:4440 from your browser.

Learn more

• Music Tracker Wiki
• Tracker's Handbook
• Tracker History Graphing Project