8bit-music-lib 0.2.0

A simple 8bit-style music library

8bit-music-lib (English)

This is a Python library for playing 8-bit style chiptune music.

日本語READMEはこちら

• Compatible with Jupyter Notebook, so it can also run on Google Colaboratory.
• Recommended for those who want to quickly try playing 8-bit music.
• In the future, support for importing and exporting MML and MIDI files is planned.

Note
Waveforms are quantized to 8-bit resolution, but for compatibility with playback libraries,
the output format is 16-bit PCM array.

---

File Structure

8bit-music-lib
├── music8bit
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── core.py
│   ├── utils.py
│   └── wave.py
├── .gitignore
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── README_ja.md
└── setup.py

---

Installation

It is recommended to install with a playback library.

Recommended: via sounddevice (Windows/macOS/Linux)

pip install 8bit-music-lib[sounddevice]

Alternative: via simpleaudio (requires C++ build tools on Windows)

pip install 8bit-music-lib[simpleaudio]

Jupyter Notebook / Google Colaboratory

Useful for playing audio and displaying waveforms directly in the notebook.
On Colab, add ! at the beginning of the command:

pip install 8bit-music-lib[jupyter]

Minimal installation

pip install 8bit-music-lib

Only waveform generation is available; audio playback is not supported.

---

Importing

Simple import:

from music8bit import *

To avoid conflicts with other modules:

import music8bit as m8

---

Example (Simple Demo: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)

import music8bit as m8

# Define notes
notes = [
    (['C5'],1), (['C5'],1), (['G5'],1), (['G5'],1),
    (['A5'],1), (['A5'],1), (['G5'],2),
    (['F5'],1), (['F5'],1), (['E5'],1), (['E5'],1),
    (['D5'],1), (['D5'],1), (['C5'],2)
]

# Define a part
part1 = m8.Part(
    melody=notes,
    volume=0.5,
    generator=m8.SquareWave(),
    first_bpm=120
)

# Create a song
song = m8.SongMixer([part1])

# Play
song.play()

Detailed usage, complex examples, and explanations of each class are summarized in the Wiki.

---

Afterword

This library was created out of the developer's personal desire to play music on Google Colab,
and turned into a library that anyone can use.

Honestly, the usability and completeness are limited.
For creating proper music, using MML or a DAW is much easier.
If you can run Pygame, convenient external libraries like Musicpy are also available in Python.

To those who still enjoy using this library, I hope you have a good 8-bit life.