DOCUMENTATION:

• WHAT IS THIS
  • Three oscillator synth with 16x16 "sprite sequencer" and effects written with the web audio javascript api.
  • Notes are determined by the color of the pixels in the sprite sequencer, which runs from left to right
  • Sequences are either drawn or imported by uploading images or clicking on patches displayed in the Patches panel
• DRAWING
  • Click on a color in the palette panel to select that color, and then draw in the sprite panel.
  • CTRL Click to select the color of a pixel in the sprite panel
  • If you ctrl click on a pixel in the sprite panel that has a color that's in the color palette, a "quick select" line of colors will appear to choose from. (probably useless)
  • Shift + Click draws a straight line between pixels
  • Coming soon: Save/Export your drawing/sequence as an image... re-upload and play it again!
• SEQUENCER
  • Upload an image! Any size, doesn't matter as it'll be squished down to 16x16 pixels, for instant pixel>sound gratification!
  • The sequencer cycles through your sprite from left to right, top to bottom.
  • It'll just keep going till you hit stop. If you load another image, it keeps playing from it's last position, it doesn't start from the beginning
  • The white border pixels are special function pixels, though only the top and left side have been assigned anything yet.
  • Clicking the top left corner pixel paints the whole panel in the color that's currently Selected
  • Clicking the top pixels creates a vertical row of the selected color
  • Clicking the left side pixels creates a horizontal row of the selected color
  • You can do gradients!
    Paint a pixel. Then, choose another color (CTRL Click) then CTRL + SHIFT + Click and a gradient will be filled in between your last pixel and the new one, running horizontaly
  • Black or transparent is a rest.
  • Looping when looping is enabled, your first click in the sequencer becomes the start of your loop, and the next click becomes the end. Drawing becomes disabled. It's buggy... def. needs some work.
• SYNTH
  • We've got portamento between notes
  • Control over OSC ONE oscillator type (sine, square, saw, triangle). Frequency for this osc is determined by the color of the sprite.
  • OSC TWO is a harmonic of OSC ONE. You have osc type and a slider for the multiplier of the fundamental frequency
  • SUBOSC is the sub-harmonic of OSC ONE. You have osc type and a slider for the divider of the fundamental frequency
  • WE HAVE MIDI! (it's kind of shitty but fun)
    Connect your midi controller (so far, only tested with an Akain MPK Mini+) and you can play notes! They may not turn off, and it'll only play 16th notes when the sequencer is running, but, it'll convert those midi notes to frequencies for the synth, and paint the current pixel the matching color.

    When the notes are played back by the sequencer, they will not sound the same... this will be fixed.

  • The delay is shite... going to remove that. Instead, route your browser's audio into Ableton... it's easy!

    Get Audio From Any Browser Into Ableton (or any other DAW), in seconds

• 0SCILISCOPE
  • Oscope.js plugin developed by Ondřej Žára, GitHub
  • Displays visualization of the synth output
  • This plugin has a couple of built in oscillators that I left in. These are not (yet) routed through the FX
  • Turning the oscillators off disconnects the synth from the oscilliscope. Restarting the sprite sequencer will reconnect the synth to it.
• ISSUES & UPCOMING FEATURES
  • UI Mobile layout and touch events need work
  • Documentation More/better
  • Sequencer CTRL + Click in the sequencer, this should select the color your clicking on.
  • Sequencer Looping implementation is a hack...
  • Oscilliscope turning the oscillators OFF disconnect the synth from the oscilliscope, though those oscillators remain connected. Stoping and restarting the sequencer will reconnect it.
  • Oscilliscope oscillators to be routed through main effects with wet/dry controls.
  • Synth Distortion is currently broken
  • Synth Some of the filter types don't do much
  • Synth Adding routable LFOs for modulation of parameters
  • MIDI at one point you could hook up your controler and play/draw notes with your keyboard. No idea if that's currently working.
  • MIDI Clock sync with your Ableton (and?).
  • Patches - Currently you can add your patch, but there's no way to delete it yet.
  • Patches Currently these only save the sequencer's pixels in the image file. Upcoming version will convert the the sequence to a 2 frame gif animation with one frame being used to store synth paramenters in pixel values, the other frame storing the sequencer data...
  • Synth Should probably add drum synth module for some beats!
• WHY?

  I built the palette and sprite panels while experimenting with getting AI to help with writing code. The idea was to build a sprite drawing tool, as I love old 80's video game sprites (cause I'm old...) There is a version that outputs svg files of your creation, the idea there being to connect that to Printify (or some other print-on-demand service) to, idk, make mugs or something...

  I've also had a long-time fascination with frequencies, harmonics, cymatics and synesthesia.

  Then Michael Red invited me to play a winter solstice ambient event he held at the Deli, and we got to talking about color frequencies and harmonics, trying to keep everything in tune... The official frequency of the event was Celeste (which is a light blue) and I ended up asking chatgpt what the frequency of that was (between 610-670 tetraHertz) and then got it to do some math and figure out what an audible harmonic of that would be, which apparently is around an F#5... so now you know!

  And after that, me and chatgpt built a little color to sound app...

  And then I mashed them together...