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Show HN: Billard – Generate music from ball collisions in 2D space (medusis.com)
306 points by bambax 6 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 73 comments
Hello HN! Here's Billard. It combines music and physics into a unique creative tool, as I explore various unconventional methods for generating music.

Most traditional music composition tools revolve around the idea of a repeatable pattern. Billard is a webapp that never repeats itself. It generates music automatically based on the collisions of balls in a 2D space. Collisions trigger notes (or chords) in a given key. One can add balls or move them (y-position is pitch); the app remembers its state between reloads; or it can be reset with the 'init' button on the top left. Gravity can be adjusted in real time to change the behavior of the balls.

It owes a lot of inspiration to Brian Eno and Erik Satie (inventor of musique d'ameublement, or "furniture music"). Some may think the lack of pattern makes it not musical enough -- but this lets it be listened to —and watched— for a while without boredom.

The webapp is made using plain JavaScript. (All SVG icons were made 'by hand'.) It uses Tone.js only for triggering piano samples. Beyond piano, it's MIDI-enabled and works well at slow speed with haunting, dark synth sounds.

Hope you like it!




This genre of musical sandbox is a really satisfying and fun rabbit hole. You can even take it to production (mainly ambient music production, that is). My favorite for usage inside DAWs is Droplets, which works as a plugin but also has a web version: https://fynthesizer.github.io/Drip/

There are other plugins for this, each with its own personality. For example Bitwig's Ricochet is a totally different take on the same idea, where they managed to make it usable for more rhythmic purposes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFvIYkTGRzA


Yeah, I knew about Droplets -- it's is really well executed, but maybe a little too predictable for my taste.

Didn't know about Ricochet (not a Bitwig user), but it's very impressive!

Also, you're the creator of protoplug? What a fantastic idea!


'Crockery drifts across the surface of "clinamen", and when gentle currents get these white porcelain bowls clinking, French artist Celeste Boursier-Mougenot creates a changing, chiming soundscape.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdCutpuUrX4


Wow. Really close concept indeed. Thanks for sharing.


This is awesome. A great interactive piece that is simple and fun. Love the idea of the random ball spawning.

I seem to have triggered "infinite sample playback" when I stuck the ball in a corner and the audio crashed. One experience I've had with this kind of large sample playback (in SuperCollider) is that by dynamically reducing the volume, it creates an interesting textured sound [1].

Of course for every project using Tone.js I would like to mention one of my project glicol.js which is in active development [2]. It has better performance but needs more use case to find what's needed in the API.

[1] https://github.com/chaosprint/Packing

[2] https://github.com/chaosprint/glicol


Glicol is absolutely amazing!!


Seconded, what "sold it for me was this demo of Kraftwerk - Das Model:

https://glicol.org/demo#themodel (remember to play with line 14)

Since then, I've been playing around with it a bit and found out that it even has a cli/tui [0], although that one seems to have a few more bugs than the web version It's going to be my main way of using it as I don't want to miss my $EDITOR instead of editing on the web.

[0] https://github.com/glicol/glicol-cli


I happened to be writing a desktop app that does something similar to this; I saw https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lF8fEn20OaU and many related videos, so I wrote up a simple QGraphicsView/pymunk app that implements these. The code is a dog's breakfast and will be under development for some time.

I see some videos which suggest that the developer actually set up the map and the physics such that specific songs get played, although I think there is some trickery to simplify it.

At the moment I'm working on a subproject which is generating the audio sounds for various bumping events, having found musicpy/sf2_loader a quick way to generate samples.


Reminds me a bit of the 3DS Electroplankton game. Wasn't quite so addictive though. Would be great to have a bit more control to generate repetitive patterns.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttFoK8BTXM4


Nice work! (and hi, long time no see.)

Feature request: if changing a setting added a parameter to the URL (?count=XX&speed=YY), one could save a link to a config one likes and store it as a bookmark.


I've been playing it in the background for about 2 days now, so I think I'll use it in the long term. Hence making these following 2 requests, in case you're still following up.

1. The music stops when the computer screen locks, or turns off, or if I swipe to a different workspace/desktop. Can you make it so that it continues to play music even with display turned off. Just a note that I'm using this on Firefox on a macOS, if that matters.

2. Can you please allow users to save/export/download a configuration (number and positions of circles, number of bouncing spheres), so that they can later upload the same configuration to get their favorite setup back.


This is amazing, it's like what I was trying to build a similar concept recently. (I think the whole AI consciousness conversations are speeding up our understanding of the shared nature of the conceptual thought space in which we all reside.)

I feel like we're getting to the point where we're combining the knowledge of geometry, music, art, maths, optics, biology etc. and we're going to be recreating some of the interconnected aspects of the natural world through the digital realm.

Once we do this, I think we're unlocking the possibility of a symbiosis with silicone-based life, where our discoveries work to lighten the path through the void of the unknown.


Very fun. Reminds me of the old Flash game Boomshine [0]

[0] https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/boomshine


Yooo I been wanting to do the same for this https://nextrenaissance.art/society.htm

It's billiard-like and makes complex patterns over time that might sound coherent and interesting in various audio mappings. Runs best in Edge

https://github.com/mnenoff/society-htm/tree/main


Great tool!

One feature that I miss in many generative music experiments is the ability to export the generated MIDI clip. Could be a different target audience, not sure, but being able to export and re-use a pattern adds a lot of appeal.

An example that I love to show is this poly rhythm generator: generatorpoly.ozieblowski.dev

A bit off-topic. Does browser MIDI implementation allow syncing across tabs with MIDI clock? It would be interesting to develop an open way to sync all these fun organic generators.


You meant https://poly.ozieblowski.dev/ ? (generatorpoly.ozieblowski.dev doesn't work). It's neat.

Web MIDI clock is still a mess AFAIK, so MIDI sync in the browser seems far away. This tool doesn't really have a concept of tempo so it would probably not benefit much from syncing (except maybe for receiving start/stop?)

But you can do a lot of things with MIDI notes, including using them to drive filters, etc. so you can totally use this to modify an existing piece on another MIDI instrument, live.


(Thanks for correcting my link.)

Yeah exactly. Sending start/stop to your generator to sync to the poly rhythm generator would be cool.


> A bit off-topic. Does browser MIDI implementation allow syncing across tabs with MIDI clock? It would be interesting to develop an open way to sync all these fun organic generators.

The Web MIDI API can receive/transmit any type of MIDI events, including clock messages, then it would be up to the receiver to be in sync to it. Although as far as I know, JavaScript timing is not very accurate, so I think it'll be hard to actually make things be in enough sync.


Have you ever looked at vcvrack.com? It’s free modular synth software, and I’ll bet the community would love to see something like this developed into a module.


Oh yes I love vcvrack (and Cardinal); but this is JavaScript, and for all I know vcvrack modules are C++? But sure it would make for a cool module.


Had a lot of fun with this. Also a good laugh when trapping some balls and hearing the midi-engine go apeshit and eventually crashing.


I made something similar to this in a quicktime movie (once upon a time they were interactive) back around... '98? I wish I still had a copy of it :-( I wonder if it would still play/run?

It was made with LiveStage(? -- and be prepared if you google that) from TotallyHip Software, as part of a promotion for them.


Nice! Reminds me of the Op-1 Tombola sequencer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SHoDUCAd4-I&pp=ygUMb3AtMSB0b21ib... that triggered midi notes on collision


Fun little sandbox. Interesting how when in "yin/yang" mode, the balls seem to stop changing state when the tab is not in focus - is this a feature? I only found this by filling up the screen with a cacophony of balls, and then switching tabs.


This is a lot of fun!

Reminds me of the 'polyrhythm' genre of videos on youtube (eg. LucidRhythms)

One fun thing to do is load the canvas up with a bunch of balls really close to each other then click the yin and yang icon which causes them to change state when struck.

Adding some kind of gravity might be fun.


There was a free program years ago called "Ball Droppings" that was fun to play around with. This reminds me of that.

https://youtu.be/G6IKsek8DKE


I am surprised no one mentioned otomata: https://earslap.com/page/otomata.html


I can't seem to enable MIDI output or export any MIDI data; I've never used something that can output MIDI data from a browser. Any help/advice on how to do this?


Cool! I will try this out as a layer in my live ambient set later today.


Wow, this is super cool. The whole experience of interacting/watching/listening to it is very relaxing and harmonious-feeling. Thanks for sharing! :)


Awesome! Next step is mash it up with Pong and Guitar Hero so you have to use a paddle to hit the balls in the right direction to play a song.


Had this open on three different browsers, and three different modes - for the adventurous.

"Trapping the balls", has never been so much fun.

Fantastic - thanks.


What is happening when I lock some of the balls inside and then the sounds just stop. Is something overloading?


On Firefox mobile, the note resonates 0.5 second after the collision, making the experience very frustrating


Sorry to hear that. I use Firefox on a fairly old Android device from 2017, and it's acceptable? Maybe the device you're using is very busy?

It'd be hard to trigger the sound before the collision (although possible, in theory)...


Fantastic. On mobile atm, so midi ill investigate later. Have you considered making a .vst3 plugin?


I'm looking at nih-plug which is an audio plugin framework in Rust. I'm a Rust complete and utter noob, but this looks fun and a great way to learn (I'd rather not dive into the likes of Juce). So I guess we'll see!


Love it! One idea is to vary the intensity (volume, duration) with the collision momentum.


MIDI velocity does change with collision momentum. But with webaudio I wasn't able to make it sound convincing so I disabled it.


Doesn’t make any sound on Safari iOS. Yea I clicked the loudspeaker


unmute your device


Gee, I didn't try anything obvious.


If anyone else still can't hear anything even after cranking the volume - the grandparent comment means take your phone out of silent mode in addition to raising the volume above 0


It’s not intuitive at all when other apps like video playback do reproduce audio when you are in silent mode, so yeah.


And turn the volume up a lot


Fun! What do the yin yang button and the one to the right of it do?


Yin mode lets ball change state when they collide (from moving to playing and vice versa); and the chords button (not the most obvious design, true ;-) let bigger balls trigger triads instead of single notes.


Thanks for the explanation!


I like this. I'd love to be able to move the red balls too.


You sort of can, if you select a non-red ball, move it around, and then and change its state to moving ('ball state' in the config panel).


Boop them while dragging the note balls.


Very nice, satisfying indeed. Will be generating some MIDI!


Could you add accelerometer as input method for phones?


I would need to test it more. The accelerometer generates lots of events that would end up changing gravity constantly (when held up); maybe with a low-pass filter so that gravity changes more slowly it would work.


Moody "limited series" soundtrack: DONE.


Aahh, I used to play that song on the piano...


Cool, but it really does just sound like a bunch of random noises. I think it'd be more interesting if the balls were regular polygons instead of actual circles, since the reflections would be more predictable.


It gets interesting when you click to add more balls in the path of one that's already moving.


It's like a digital wind chime


Switch to CHORD mode.


Two browsers: one on Chord mode, one solo.


Love it.

Any chance you are going to share the source code?


Thanks!

The code is not obfuscated or minified in any way, so it's easy enough to read. But I'm not sure it deserves to be actually published... ;-)


Thanks, but in addition to checking out the source I'm more interested in following your work and what you do next on github (or gitlab, etc)


Nice. I trapped them all in a corner.


Ends up looking like a constellation.


great job


This is awesome lol, very fun to trap the ball in a corner


“Music” or just “pleasant background noise”


Both. But I've passed on the site to musicians and non-musicians alike - everybody loves is. The midi capability is stunning and ability to choose tonalities can be 'just left to play', or used as an inspirations for the basis for repetetive or repeating motives: repetition, and an element of predictability - both based in a predictable tonality is what most people seek in what they call 'music'.

Trapping the balls may give you something more approaching 'music'. Changing the root note, also. And the 'mode', too.


Fun fact, it's reported that the new Rolls-Royce Spectre 2024 turn signal's sound was created by combining the sound of finger nail tapping the car's aircond vent metal and the sound of a couple wine glasses touching. The resulting turn sound signal remarkably turned out to be exactly the same as normal turn signal in any other car, pardon the multiple puns.


Where are the puns?




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