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I find Buzz a joy to use as a programmable / repeatable mixer, too. I love the tracker's ability to record knob/slider positions and play it back faithfully. Qu

I find Buzz a joy to use as a programmable / repeatable mixer, too. I love the tracker's ability to record knob/slider positions and play it back faithfully. Quantized recordings of parameters just make so much sense to me. I think about my Buzz files as the "source code" that will eventually be mixed-down to PCM audio. I can always go back to the "source" if I want to make modifications and re-render. I think of it a little like non-destructive editing layers in a bitmap editor, or like editing graphics in a vector format and rendering-down to raster for presentation.

usrusr 5y ago
What I missed in buzz was a way to apply tracker commands (shift, reverse, transpose and so on) to patterns, because I always toyed with the synths, hardly ever using samples at all (where tracker commands are traditionally applied to). I eventually dropped out of my music dabbling phase endlessly failing at building a parser/interpreter/editor for a text-based notation syntax (as an alternative to the spreadsheet of trackers) that would do away with the spreadsheed format of trackers and add multiple levels of "notation controlling notation" for a deliberately quirky macro language (all variables were stacks and those stacks eventually degenerate into ringbuffers when pushed more than popped). It would have existed on peer ctrl level (or as a midi source if pivoted to standalone) which I believe would have been quite unique, because even CucK seems to be more focused on synthesis than on notation.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > add multiple levels of "notation controlling notation" for a deliberately quirky macro language Would something like Supercollider fit the deal there?
  - usrusr 5y ago
    Quite possible that all or at least most of those are in there somewhere as a tiny little feature subset, I've never used it. But at least example screenshots seem to be quite eager to dive down to the synthesis level. I'm sure that you could use it to just output midi events but the same could be said about e.g. Python or Java or Rust and I wouldn't call those notation syntax either. It would have been an attempt to retain as much of established tracker ergonomics as possible while abandoning the spreadsheet-lines-as-time metaphor.

usrusr 5y ago

What I missed in buzz was a way to apply tracker commands (shift, reverse, transpose and so on) to patterns, because I always toyed with the synths, hardly ever using samples at all (where tracker commands are traditionally applied to). I eventually dropped out of my music dabbling phase endlessly failing at building a parser/interpreter/editor for a text-based notation syntax (as an alternative to the spreadsheet of trackers) that would do away with the spreadsheed format of trackers and add multiple levels of "notation controlling notation" for a deliberately quirky macro language (all variables were stacks and those stacks eventually degenerate into ringbuffers when pushed more than popped). It would have existed on peer ctrl level (or as a midi source if pivoted to standalone) which I believe would have been quite unique, because even CucK seems to be more focused on synthesis than on notation.

zozbot234 5y ago
> add multiple levels of "notation controlling notation" for a deliberately quirky macro language Would something like Supercollider fit the deal there?
- usrusr 5y ago
  Quite possible that all or at least most of those are in there somewhere as a tiny little feature subset, I've never used it. But at least example screenshots seem to be quite eager to dive down to the synthesis level. I'm sure that you could use it to just output midi events but the same could be said about e.g. Python or Java or Rust and I wouldn't call those notation syntax either. It would have been an attempt to retain as much of established tracker ergonomics as possible while abandoning the spreadsheet-lines-as-time metaphor.