#1

I just released a free PDF guide to coding Bytebeat music. You know, those few lines of code, generating fun chiptune music! This one, for example … go ahead and play with the code! :wink:

You can download the guide here then:
https://nightmachines.tv/bytebeats-tutorial

A little bit of background info:
When discovering Bytebeats recently, in anticipation of the AE Modular AlgoDrone module, I loved that I could just randomly change pieces of code and would usually end up with a musical “happy accident”. After a while though, I wanted to know more why things behaved like they did, but I didn’t find much information for absolute beginners without much math knowledge and coding experience. So I did a lot of research and in then end, wrote this guide from the notes I had gathered along the way.

I’d love to get feedback on this, so let me know how the guide worked for you, if you have time :slight_smile:

Happy coding!

28 Likes
AE Modular: budget analog modular synth
#2

This was a really fun way to start the day :slight_smile:

t/5|t*2&t/20>>1|45*t*-t/666|t/12|t/666>>2

3 Likes
#3

just wanted to additionally link to viznut who did early work on bytebeat (and has some great writing)

5 Likes
#4

Oh, hey, neat! I’ve always wanted to understand bytebeats better. Thank you for this! Looking forward to going through it.

#5

At one point I wrote a VST plugin based on a collection of two-parameter bytebeat algorithms. If I ever get back into actually writing musical code I might port it to something a bit more open rather than using the libraries that I did.

But it kind of took away from the livecoding experience of the thing, just turning it into a glitchy oscillator without much of the self-contained rhythm and melody that is kind of the whole point of bytebeats.

#6

Yeah, viznut’s stuff got me started :slight_smile: I included links to his pages at the back of the guide PDF because I think he quickly gets more “advanced” too.

3 Likes
#7

t/.75&t/127%96|t/35

sounds best at 11kHz, but is pretty dance-y at 22 :slight_smile:

#8

I still like the Equation Composer for this kind of stuff.
Thanks @NightMachines for the doc!

#9

Equation Composer rules. Popping the byte-beat modes through an LPG can produce excellent, fluid percussion.

There is also this art project, “1 bit symphony,” from a few years ago: https://vimeo.com/12244413

1 Like
#10

Nice, thanks for sharing! Looking forward to reading your pdf and understanding bytebeats better.
I was first introduced to bytebeats from the viznutcracker, sweet!-mode on o_C, and been fascinated by it since. Definitely my favourite mode on that module. Played bytebeats at a really high speed into the low pass CV-input of my ms20 via English Tear, and got almost digital sounding tones out that almost 40 year old machine. Incredible.

#11

this is fantastic! I’ve looked at them briefly before, but this is a solid guide and now I can really sink my teeth into the bytebeat world. thanks for your work!

#12

// butte horn
(t/4|t+3&t|t<<5&t+t-7%t12|t%9>>13|t(t%21)/13&t+(t/15))&t>>7
I got ahead of myself
need to read what you wrote up!
thank you so much for this endless entertainment

1 Like
#13

this is an awesome guide!!! really well written, thank you a lot. I will share this link around!!

#14

Thank you, everyone! I really have to hunt down an Equation Composer! That module looks cool indeed :slight_smile: Too bad they closed shop …

#16

Ornament and Crime has byte beat mode: Viznutcracker Sweet! It works well and provides as a waveform or as CV. It has about a dozen byte beat expressions built sadly no editor. Though you could probably modify the O_c firmware and install your own.

The Ornament and Crime is great for byte beat. Sadly you don’t have access to the quantizer in the CV mode. I have two O_c sending the output of one running Viznutcracker into the other running Quantermain works pretty well. Especially with delay, of everything sounds better with some delay.

3 Likes
#17

try this one: (t<<3)*[8/9,1,9/8,6/5,4/3,3/2,0][[0xd2d2c8,0xce4088,0xca32c8,0x8e4009][t>>14&3]>>(0x3dbe4688>>((t>>10&15)>9?18:t>>10&15)*3&7)*3&7]

9 Likes
#18

Holy crap! This is next level stuff!

3 Likes
#19

Wow this is all so interesting.

For some reason it never occurred to me that computer music could essentially be reduced to a single parameter being iterated over 8000 times per second. I’m so used to working in big heavy DAWs that it’s great to see it distilled down to something so primitive. I love the fact that you can get something like this working in C without a single dependency

I’m having a much needed mini-vacation from my job at the moment and this was a perfect rabbit hole to start my day with! Really nice guide by the way @NightMachines definitely helped me to actually get a handle on what is going on

4 Likes