pocketrockit 0.0.30

Live music coding inspired by Sonic Pi

POCKETROCKIT - A rocket in your pocket that rocks!

Original project page: https://projects.om-office.de/frans/pocketrockit.git

Write a music track in Python and play it while you write it (as you might know it from Sonic Pi, but written in Python (sonic.py was not available on PyPi, though)).

Write melodies, create rythm patterns, define endless simultaneously playing instruments, all in a .. well .. simple Python syntax.

Installation

[<PYTHON> -m] pip[3] install [--upgrade] pocketrockit

Usage

Workflow is not quite mature yet, so here is the short version for now.

Create and enter a separate folder and provide required SoundFont files (configurable later, hard-coded for now).

Pocketrockt expects two SoundFont files: instrumental.sf2 and drums.sf2. You can download and move/rename any file that works for you, and you can also just create symlinks (this is what I do).

This is just an example:

mkdir mytracks
cd mytracks
ln -s /usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM.sf2 instrumental.sf2
wget https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/2744/JV_1080_Drums.sf2
ln -s JV_1080_Drums.sf2 drums.sf2

The file FluidR3_GM.sf2 was shipped with FluidSynth for me, and I got JV_1080_Drums.sf2 from here.

Create a file myfirsttrack.py with the following content:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from pocketrockit import Env, midiseq, player, track

@track
def my_first_track(env: Env):

    @player
    def metronome():
        yield from midiseq("x x x x", channel=128, note=37)

    @player
    def melody1():
        yield from midiseq(
            "| .                .                 .                (II I)      "
            "| (II  VI<)        (IV< VI< . II<)   .                (II I)      "
            "| (II  VI<)        (IV< VI< . II<)   .                (II III)    "
            "| (IV  . III IV)   (. IV . II)       (III . II III)   (. III . I) "
            ,
            key="A5", channel=13)

Now - keeping the editor open for later use - execute this file. You can either make it executable and run it directly or you run python3 instead:

chmod +x myfirsttrack.py
./myfirsttrack.py

# or

python3 myfirsttrack.py

Development & Contribution

pip3 install -U poetry pre-commit
git clone --recurse-submodules https://projects.om-office.de/frans/pocketrockit.git
cd pocketrockit
pre-commit install
# if you need a specific version of Python inside your dev environment
poetry env use ~/.pyenv/versions/3.10.4/bin/python3
poetry install

After modifications, this way a newly built wheel can be checked and installed:

poetry build
poetry run twine check dist/pocketrockit-0.0.25-py3-none-any.whl
python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade dist/pocketrockit-0.0.25-py3-none-any.whl

Stuff to read / Sources

SoundFonts

• https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/soundfonts-and-sfz-files
• https://www.producersbuzz.com/category/downloads/download-free-soundfonts-sf2/
• https://archive.org/details/500-soundfonts-full-gm-sets
• https://ia802502.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/27/items/500-soundfonts-full-gm-sets/500_Soundfonts_Full_GM_Sets.zip
• https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts?formats=sf2&tags=soundfont

flatpak install flathub com.polyphone_soundfonts.polyphone flatpak run com.polyphone_soundfonts.polyphone instrumental.sf2

Music stuff

• https://pianoscales.org/major.html
• https://www.inspiredacoustics.com/en/MIDI_note_numbers_and_center_frequencies
• https://onlinesequencer.net/181312
• https://github.com/Rainbow-Dreamer
• https://github.com/Rainbow-Dreamer/musicpy-daw
• https://sound.stackexchange.com/
• librosa
• PO-20 Arcade key signatures for chords

Drum patterns

• Pocket Operations
• 10 Popular Drum Patterns Every Producer Should Know
• Making Reggae & Dub music (2) Stepper beat
• Dub Reggae Drum Beat Backing Track 150 bpm
• The Basics Of Reggae Drumming

Tech stuff

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20023545/running-pyfluidsynth-pyaudio-demo-many-problems-with-alsa-and-jack
• https://www.ladspa.org/
• How can I record audio output from command line in Linux?
• Communicating between SuperCollider and Python
• https://pypi.org/project/sc3/ / https://github.com/smrg-lm/sc3
• https://pypi.org/project/supercollider/ https://github.com/ideoforms/python-supercollider
• supriya
• TOML

Notation

• https://sneslab.net/wiki/Music_Macro_Language
• https://objectcomputing.com/resources/publications/sett/january-2008-writing-music-in-java-two-approaches
• https://mascii.org/
• https://www.mobilefish.com/tutorials/rtttl/rtttl_quickguide_specification.html
• https://pypi.org/project/musicpy/
• Kodou

Similar projects

• https://foxdot.org/ / https://github.com/Qirky/FoxDot

Troubles

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47247814/pygame-midi-init-function-errors

• Missing /usr/local/share/alsa/alsa.conf

ALSA lib conf.c:4555:(snd_config_update_r) Cannot access file /usr/local/share/alsa/alsa.conf
ALSA lib seq.c:935:(snd_seq_open_noupdate) Unknown SEQ default

sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/alsa
sudo ln -s /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf /usr/local/share/alsa/alsa.conf