Networked livecoding instrument, with aleatoric recording and playback.
Works in Chrome and Firefox (tested with Chromium 81, Firefox 76).
For a broad overview and some cultural context, read this.
In online mode, each player has control over a single Javascript expression, which generates successive samples of that player's audio output. This is their instrument. Each player has one instrument, and players can see what all other players are doing as they edit and run their code. Players can also control where they play their instrument using the canvas at the top: the headphones represent the listener, and each player can move their speaker by dragging (to change position) and scrolling (to change angle).
Several example snippets (presets) are included for demonstration and convenience.
For a few quick examples, the expression 0 generates silence. sin(2*pi*440*t) generates a pure tone at 440 Hz. (rand() * 2) - 1 generates white noise.
All the Javascript math functions are available for use in expressions without the Math. prefix. A couple of aliases are available for convenience: rand = Math.random, pi = Math.PI, and e = Math.E.
Expressions can reference 5 special variables.
t refers to the clock time in seconds, as of the current sample.
now refers to the time at which the current expression started running.
x, y, and z are variables free for the player's use; they're initialized to 0, by players may change them as they wish (since JS allows assignments in expressions).
Players can reference other players' streams by name. For instance, if player 0's expression is t%2<1 and player 1's expression is sin(2*pi*440*t)*p0, p0 will take the values of player 0's output, and player 1's output will be a tone that alternates between playing for a second, and resting for a second.
Currently, other players' values are delayed by 128 samples, but this is likely to change in future versions.
The output of all expressions is clipped to the range [-1, 1], so the expression 5 is equivalent to 1, and the expression sin(2*pi*t*440)*N will converge to a square wave as N approaches infinity.
You can run a server with ./run.sh; this requires some Python 3 dependencies, as listed in requirements.txt. A public test server is available at kilobeat.fly.dev.
In online mode, other players can run arbitrary Javascript in your browser. As far as I am aware this is relatively low-risk, as JS runs in a sandbox, the application does not request any permissions beyond playing audio, and the user code is trapped inside an AudioWorklet (and thus can't call alert(), send HTTP requests, or access the main thread's memory). That said, the security of all this depends on the security of your browser, so play with others at your own risk.
Offline mode is just like online mode, except that you can play all the instruments yourself, so to speak. That is, you can create additional offline 'players' and control their expressions and speakers, too, in addition to the one you control in online mode.
You can record a performance and play it back later using the buttons on the right. The recording will include all the visible details of the performance: cursor motion, edits, code execution, and speaker motion. On playback, these events are replayed and the sound is generated again. Unlike an audio recording, the audio may well be different on playback, particularly if the player's used randomness—this will be freshly generated on playback.
For demonstration, a recording (recording.kb) is included in this repository.
- bytebeat
- Audio DSP Playground
- Gibber and other web-based livecoding environments
Ian Clester — ijc8.me
Initial CSS styles and WebAudio code blatantly stolen from Arthur Cabott's Audio DSP Playground, which in turn adapted stabilized oscilloscope code from Ewen.
Spatialization adapted from Boris Smus' WebAudio demos.
Speaker and headset icons from Material Design.