fluhus / beatnik

A drum programming language.

Beatnik

Beatnik is a drum programming language.

What Does it Do?

With Beatnik you can type text which describes your beat, and Beatnik will interpret it and turn in into MIDI.

Getting Started

1. Go to the (experimental) demo page.
2. Read the tutorial.
3. Start making beats!

Running Locally

1. Go to releases and download the relevant file. It contains two executables: btnk and gui.
2. Read the tutorial.
3. Start making beats using btnk with the command line, or gui with your browser.

btnk

btnk is a command line compiler that turns Beatnik code (typically with .btn suffix) into MIDI files.

From the command line run:

btnk file1.btn file2.btn

btnk will create file1.btn.mid and file2.btn.mid.

gui

gui is a graphical web interface. Once you run it you can open your browser at the address it shows on the terminal.

This is an experimental thing I did for demonstration purposes. Would love to get feedback on where to take it further!

Getting The Code

To download the code and build your own:

1. Install the go compiler (add it to your path).
2. Set the GOPATH environment variable to you code directory.
3. Run:

   go get github.com/fluhus/beatnik
   go install github.com/fluhus/beatnik/btnk github.com/fluhus/beatnik/gui
   

4. Find the compiled binaries under bin and source code under src.

Happy coding!

Samples

Isolated samples: Song 2, 50 Ways

Beatnik is used on my project Out of Bounds. Check it out for mixed samples.