Chris McCormick

Speccy is a small utililty I built for live-coding chiptune music in the browser with Clojurescript.

You can copy sounds from sfxr.me and paste them in as synth definitions, using code to modify any parameter over time, or start from scratch by building a synth up from basic parameters.

You can paste the following examples into the online editor to try it out:

; blippy synth
(sfxr {:wave :square :env/decay 0.1 :note #(at % 32 {0 24 3 29 7 60 12 52 19 29 28 52})})

; donk bass
(sfxr "1111128F2i1nMgXwxZ1HMniZX45ZzoZaM9WBtcQMiZDBbD7rvq6mBCATySSmW7xJabfyy9xfh2aeeB1JPr4b7vKfXcZDbWJ7aMPbg45gBKUxMijaTNnvb2pw"
      {:note #(or
        (at % 57
          {5 35
           27 34})
        (at % 32
           {0 24
            6 29
            18 21
            26 12}))})

; hi hat
(sfxr {:wave :noise
       :env/sustain 0.05
       :env/decay 0.05
       :vol #(sq % [0.3 0.1 0.2 0.1])})

; snare
(sfxr "7BMHBGCKUHWi1mbucW62sVAYvTeotkd4qSZKy91kof8rASWsAx1ioV4EjrXb9AHhuKEprWr2D4u4YHJpYEzWrJd8iitvr23br2DCGu7zMqFmPyoSFtUEqiM64"
      {:note 36
       :vol #(at % 16
         {4 0.5
          12 0.5})})

The full source code and documentation is available at GitHub.

Enjoy!

After 14 years of playing music together on Gameboy Advance and Commodore 64 my buddy Fenris and I finally recorded an album while he was visiting during Xmas.

You can listen to the album for free or purchase a download for however much you like.

All of the software we use to play music is Free and Open Source:

• Looper Advance
• aSid
• Raspberry Pi FX unit
• c64 paddle MIDI controller

I hope you enjoy the music.

In November I was in New York for PdCon 2016 and to visit my brother, thanks in large part to my friend Joe Deken and his not-for-profit, New Blankets.

The conference was fantastic. Many fascinating performances, a chance to catch up in person with people from the Pure Data community, and the opportunity to present and perform some of my own work. A highlight for me was hearing Miller Puckette, creator of Pure Data, talk about his approach and philosophy.

On top of that I got to catch up with some awesome people outside of the conference, especially my brother. We went hiking together one day - a rare opportunity to hang out together in nature.

Tonight my friend Fenris and I will play some music in a park here in Perth, Western Australia, on Gameboy and Commodore 64 powered by batteries and broadcast over FM radio to local speakers hanging from the trees. We'll start playing at 9:30pm and after us our friends Atomsmasha and Kataplexia will also play some music on Gameboys.

Might see you there!