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by oinj 1482 days ago
Absolutely awesome! I've long been attracted to tracker software but I could never find one that really makes me want to use it. Although this is browser-based, it might just be the one for me.

Something I would very much like to see in all music software, including this one, is an alternative for keyboard-based note entry and preview that is not based on the piano, but on the guitar/bass. Basically, each keyboard key is a semitone over the one on its left, and keys ZAQ1 are mapped to notes EAGD (when in QWERTY). It's very simple to do and I find it much easier to work that way, because it makes it very easy to play melodies and find note relationships the way you would on a guitar fretboard. No guessing where the black keys lie, most things are transpositionally invariant. I've made this into a macOS app and after more than 6 years using it, I find it vastly superior and much more adapted to the limitations of a computer keyboard. The fact the keyboard lines are staggered is annoying at first, but I've been quickly able to get over it. I guess all guitar players would find that useful as well.
2 comments
yowlingcat 1482 days ago
Very cool; I must say, I've never thought of, or seen this mapping used but looking at it, it does totally match a guitar fretboard and if you go horizontally it maps very closely.

I imagine part of this comes from the fact the fact that QWERTY midi maps to the piano rather than guitar comes from the fact that most MIDI controllers are piano based rather than guitar based (with a couple exceptions), so generally speaking if you're composing music at the computer (whether with a tracker or conventional DAW), you're going to generally bite the bullet and just learn how to hack it on a keyboard. I've adapted to this just because it makes it easier to use the existing ecosystem of equipment and software, but I always wondered what it would be like for things to be more guitar based.

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Minor49er 1482 days ago
This is a really cool idea. I used to be big into tracking and grew to get used to ModPlug Tracker's "diamond" layout where each row represented an octave, then would continue up semitones as you moved to the right.

So for example, Q, A, and Z would be C-3, C-4, and C-5. W, S, and X would be C#3, C#4, C#5. E, D, and C would be D-3, D-4, D-5, and so on.

I'm going to have to try the guitar mapping. It would be fun to make a little program for this, then strap a keyboard over my shoulder and maybe use the spacebar to strum

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