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#bytebeat#generativemusic#demoscene

Bytebeat: Music from very short programs - the 3rd iteration

Ville-Matias Heikkilä (viznut)

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  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Ville-Matias Heikkilä

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

326K views15 years ago1 recommendation

Graphics and audioProgramming languagesAudio and DSPCreative codingC

Ville-Matias Heikkilä demonstrates algorithmic music generated by extremely short, one-line C programs and JavaScript expressions.

Very short C programs and Javascript expressions generating musical output. This is the third video in the series. More info: countercomplex.blogspot.com/2011/10/algorithmic-symphonies-f… and (with a more in-depth analysis) countercomplex.blogspot.com/2011/10/some-deep-analysis-of-on… You can experiment online at wurstcaptures.untergrund.net/music/ or entropedia.co.uk/generative_music/ You can also join the IRCnet channel #countercomplex patreon.com/viznut

Why it's here

1 person recommends this

What people say. Recommended as a classic demonstration of bytebeat, showing how complex audio patterns can emerge from simple bitwise arithmetic.

isoprophlexon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Mandala: A little plaground for testing pixel logic patterns”

See also the 1D version of this, rendered as audio: "bytebeat" music. Surprisingly complex music from very simple modular arithmetic and bit shifting. link to this video
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laumarson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Experimental one-line algorithmic music”

I think the theory behind this is a great deal more interesting than that video lets on. The idea started out as simple C programs piping characters to a UNIX audio device. But it's grown since then, now there's a web page that lets you create audio with Javascript expressions1 (one of my favorite tracks from this scene was generated that way2). There's some good blog posts about the origins of this3, and music theory behind it4; both of which will go into more detail than I'd care to for a HN comment3. 1 link 2 link to this video (5m 13s) 3 link 4 link
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vegedoron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Show HN: Wavepot – Digital audio workstation of the web”

>I'm glad you like it. The sound is generated purely by a JavaScript function returning sample values i feel like this belongs here: link to this video - not in a DAW kinda sense, though
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vanderZwanon Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra: A Visual Approach (2015) [pdf]”

…an 8-bit value, map every possible input to an output, and show the results as an image, it should make it easy to see where we have an integer overflow, for example (if we see sudden jumps from very bright to dark or the other way around). Then I realised: I have seen this in the wild! It's used all over the place in the demo-scene. For example: link to this video link Aside, this also reminds me of Gustafson's closure plots for comparing his number encoding to standard floating points, although it's not really the same thing: link…
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DonHopkinson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Conway's Game of Life on Dec PDP-7, Type 340 Display, & Am Radio ByteBeat Music”

…rom one line of code and was discovered/invented while Finnish low-tech artist and programmer Ville-Matias Heikkila (aka Viznut) and his friends were experimenting with the computer programming language C code and creating one line formulas that could produce an audio output (see below). Bytebeat: Music from very short programs - the 3rd iteration link to this video Bytebeat - Music from math formulas link…
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