14 ms·

Plink: Create epic music together with friends and strangers

229 points by paulkrush 4y ago

bitwize 4y ago
It reminds me of the random/algorithmically generated riffs from Ballblazers. Looks like they use a pentatonic scale so the result always sounds good, no matter how wildly you scribble.
someweirdperson 4y ago
Some of the instruments (colors) seem to have a limited set of notes available. The first I selected was one if those, felt like I was unable to create any sound, before noticing instruments could be switched. It needs a hard mode with 12 half tones per octave available.
NIL8 4y ago
I was excited to try this, but the page is stuck on "loading."
Jerry2 4y ago
is it possible to save the composition?
InCityDreams 4y ago
20 seconds is way too soon to get kicked out. I have this running on my phone and a PC and I'm playing 'against' myself. Only the phone keeps playing with no input..oh, no - kicked out. Stunning idea, great execution: needs just a few touches - there are a lot of musicians that would enjoy this more and a lot of people that would enjoy the hypnotic effect - take a look at https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/gregorianChoirGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/gregorianChoirGenerator.ph... - esssntially boring at the end of the day , but the kickout [edit: from this site] is too soon.
vivegi 4y ago
A save/export functionality would be awesome.
paulkrush 4y ago
Yeah, this has been covered in the past. Yeah, I should go back and read the comments from then. It's still a fun site.
- paulkrush 4y ago
  It should be https://plink.in/ https://plink.in/ But I can't edit the URL...
  - pimlottc 4y ago
    Just resubmit then, there’s no penalty
- paulkrush 4y ago
  HN in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089901 But it was this site: http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink/ http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink/
allears 4y ago
Site uses invalid certificate. Certificate is registered to casestudies.dinahmoe.com.
pimlottc 4y ago
Could use a bit of onboarding, I spent a minute tapping the squares on the left and not understanding why it Wasn’t doing anything. But fun when I figured out I’m supposed to be touching the area to the right to make sounds.
- paulkrush 4y ago
  You can hold the mouse down to advance. This is all I have figured out.
- paulkrush 4y ago
  Click on the colored squares to change the sound
chaosprint 4y ago
Very interesting idea and very good experience. Love the visual design. Would be happy to see it in detail but I guess it is not open-source? A phenomenon I observe is that when many of us are at the same place, right after one person start to click and drag, the rest start to do the same thing. But after a while, I found that available synths are quite limited so I close the page. I guess the creator can get some statistics and test with different sound making possibilities. Can have some genres preferences such as Melody or Noise feast... An idea is to use Glicol.js(https://glicol.js.org/ https://glicol.js.org/) as the audio engine instead of the raw Web Audio API and save the result somewhere so it can be reused for research or future composition. The usage of Glicol like this can be found on https://synth.is/ https://synth.is/ Some socials would be even better. On Glicol website(https://glicol.org https://glicol.org) there is also an App for collaborative music live coding where at least we can change the name and chat as comments. All in all, I see great potential in this App. I feel that the best place for it is actually not here in HN or other place you share links, but allocated in different museums like Tate. I once thought about setting up some collaborative live coding devices that way. But this is apparently a better fit for the museum context for its intuitiveness!
stevenalowe 4y ago
Tremendous fun!
mkaic 4y ago
This is so fun! Spent 10 minutes just jamming out. I think the scale and time quantizations are what make it truly fun to use, because it's almost hard to make anything sound bad! Love it.
- stemlord 4y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks it's lame that nothing sounds bad? Makes me feel like I'm playing with a children's toy. I don't feel like I've done something interesting by playing in tune with others since it's all in tune... it restricts possibilities drastically
  - meowface 4y ago
    I agree with you, but, pitch-stuff aside, the time issue is an inescapable constraint. You can't have perfectly live simultaneous collaborative playing over the internet; things will inevitably be out-of-time for many. Due to the speed of light, you actually can never reasonably achieve this for two people maximally separated across Earth, even with hypothetical perfect technology and latency at its theoretical minimum. If the participants are both very close in physical space, like on a LAN or something close to it, latency could potentially be minimized enough to make it acceptable, but that's pretty much it. If your goal is to make something as accessible as possible to as many global internet users as possible, you either need a) some degree of time quantization (which makes it more rigid and less musical and creative) or b) some kind of buffering and/or turn-taking system (basically, overdubbing, which makes it less "live-collaborative" / "jam-like" and potentially less enjoyable to participate in compared to something more live). At least, this is my understanding of the problem. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
    - xnorswap 4y ago
      In a large orchestra, you can have people sitting 10m away from each other which given the slow speed of sound is 30ms between them. A 60ms round-trip means that if they were to each try to play in time with the other by sound it would get horrendously out of sync quickly. Which is why the conductor is so important. I'd guess concert players must have to train themselves to "tune out" what they're hearing and focus on the conductor because the whole thing is set up for the benefit of the audience.
danbmil99 4y ago
I'm getting a cert error
- andybak 4y ago
  Me too.
feoren 4y ago
I'm confused, it doesn't look like it's possible to actually do anything on this site. There's a bunch of already-completed projects you want me to look at described with text that runs outside of its bounding box, and when I manage to actually figure out how to click on one of the projects, it's one of those awful full-screen ad-pages where you write one sentence with a huge banner image and I have to scroll a page down to read the next sentence? Is the title clickbait? You don't seem at all interested in having me create any sort of music. You seem interested in selling me on something that Beck did.
- paulkrush 4y ago
  What?, no this is real. The URL is wrong. I put in "plink.in" and HN added "test." or something... Go to https://plink.in/ https://plink.in/ and click "play now". You "Jam" with other random people. It "makes" you sound good. I don't know music, but I have a feeling that anyone who does would just bash this for being superficial.
  - TonyTrapp 4y ago
    Hacker News uses the canonical link attribute of the site, if present. The canonical link to your site, according to the HTML header, is test.plink.in. You should fix that because not only Hacker News will get confused by that. That said, it's a nice toy!
    - rzzzt 4y ago
      Yep, just wanted to share it with friends and the link preview thing on Facebook also grabs the rel="canonical" URL.
abledon 4y ago
https://plink.in/ https://plink.in/ everyone! This is the best site I have used in the past 2 years. Wow. I was laughing at all the melodies my teammate kept making, then i tried to syncopate and throw in a competing solo. at one point we ('parental cougar' and 'developed gerbil') had the call & response blues solo thing going. This is HILARIOUS! Well Done!!!!!!!! augmentatations: - Hotkeys to switch instruments, - AWSD or arrow keys to navigate up/down, R/F or other keys to go up/down by 2 or 3 jumps
conradfr 4y ago
How did this get upvoted without the correct url? This is fun though.
psyclobe 4y ago
Ok that was fun
agentwiggles 4y ago
This is wildly cool. At one point I locked in with another user for about a minute or two, we were taking cues from each other and getting into little call-response counterpoint kinda patterns. Every once in a while when I'm playing with other musicians, I hit this little moment of magic where both people start to smile - there's something happening, you're working together. That feeling is one of the most joyful human experiences I know of. I started to feel that same smile creep across my face when I synced up with whatever anonymous stranger was playing at the same time as me. We were dancing back and forth, trading high and low voices. This a really fun little toy. What an awesome thing, to enable that brief moment of joy and connection with another, anonymously online while I sat here on the toilet. :) Thanks for sharing.
- malikNF 4y ago
  >At one point I locked in with another user for about a minute or two, we were taking cues from each other and getting into little call-response counterpoint kinda patterns Same, this is amazing, loved the site and spent more time on there than I expected. Really well done OP. This is one of the best things I have seen here on HN. Thank you OP.
- sixQuarks 4y ago
  Were you pooping to the sounds of the beat?
cush 4y ago
The URL is wrong. Should be https://plink.in https://plink.in
- dang 4y ago
  https://test.plink.in https://test.plink.in was listed as the canonical URL, and our software uses those when it finds them. I've reverted that now. Thanks!
cush 4y ago
This is so fun!! Really needs keyboard support though
drewbeck 4y ago
Cool as butts, dang.
IAmGraydon 4y ago
This is awesome. Also, I’ve never seen a site get my iPhone this hot! Anyone else experiencing this? I’m guessing it has a massive processor load.
owenpalmer 4y ago
Super cool!
jb_s 4y ago
This is amazing I do wish you could unlock different modes and step outside of just the pentatonic scale (expert mode?) but hey, awesome thing, I'm having great fun :-)
- em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
  I agree. Starting newcomers with just the pentatonic is smart, cause it is hard to screw up musically!
georgeoliver 4y ago
I remember the first web browser pentatonic scale music toy I found (can't remember the name, but the one with the 8x8ish grid where you click squares to play them on the beat), and just how amazingly fun it was! I feel like we still haven't seen the full potential of networked instruments, so far the focus still seems to be on virtual jamming.
driver8_ 4y ago
This is super cool, I jammed with some strangers!
Pr0ject217 4y ago
Super cool! It would also be interesting if you could upload samples. And, play the role of the team's mixer by adjusting the relative balances of each lane in real-time, and find a space for each element using EQ/panning/delay/reverb.
akomtu 4y ago
Some potential see here I. A few ideas. Add drum sounds. Make it a circle: distance from center will be the pitch, and an arrow moving clockwise will be the time. Allow to draw lines: when such a line crosses a pitch circumference, it will make a sound. Line color will be instrument type. The time arrow will keep revolving around the center, playing the pattern over and over. You'll basically draw music this way.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Add drum sounds. Tried it for a bit, and definitely came across some percussion sounds. Hihats for sure, and something like a tom was there too I think.
d23 4y ago
The way everyone comes and goes, temporary beings on a stage making temporary music together is mesmerizing. Beautiful and wildly addictive.
fit2rule 4y ago
PhantomBKB 4y ago
This is absolutely gold! Whoever made this wins the internet
withoutsnow 4y ago
It shows potential but still remains a toy for now, reminding me of the looping app on iPad where you can add or remove loops to compose music. You will never fail, but that's the problem: improvisation often comes with risk and that makes us exciting. Can learn different things from other interesting web-based interfaces: https://glicol.org https://glicol.org https://gibber.cc https://gibber.cc https://roland50.studio https://roland50.studio
- lawrencechen 4y ago
  This multiplayer live coding/composition in lisp is worth checking out: https://youtu.be/v4rcAIVvPQ8?t=3591 https://youtu.be/v4rcAIVvPQ8?t=3591 (video linked to in gibber.cc's homepage, which features gibber.cc in other segments)
Markoff 4y ago
I don't find the music epic at all, it produces some cheap synth music far from epic Hans Zimmer music.
gloosx 4y ago
This is golden, just hopped in on bass and it`s THAT FEELING of a randomly arranged jamming band
IndySun 4y ago
I touch to start, the graphic fades to black... and that's it. I will have to take peoples words for it.
IndySun 4y ago
Is it like https://endlesss.fm/ https://endlesss.fm/ ?
uhuruity 4y ago
This was great. It recreated the ephemeral joy of jamming together with a group of people. Wish there was some kind of chat feature but I guess that would be tough to moderate
r0b05 4y ago
This is mesmerizing. Bravo!
memorable 4y ago
It keeps saying there's a problem with the server, so a bit disappointing. But a lot of people tells that it's a fun game so I will try on my desktop! Thanks for this submission :)
santimoller66 4y ago
[dead]
vivegi 4y ago
Wildly addictive! Bravo. What a nice piece of software!
Breakthrough 4y ago
Are there keyboard controls? Someone I was just playing with seemed to always lock on each "note" or "half note" exactly, wasn't sure how they were doing that.

229 points by paulkrush 4y ago

It reminds me of the random/algorithmically generated riffs from Ballblazers. Looks like they use a pentatonic scale so the result always sounds good, no matter how wildly you scribble.

someweirdperson 4y ago

Some of the instruments (colors) seem to have a limited set of notes available. The first I selected was one if those, felt like I was unable to create any sound, before noticing instruments could be switched. It needs a hard mode with 12 half tones per octave available.

NIL8 4y ago

I was excited to try this, but the page is stuck on "loading."

Jerry2 4y ago

is it possible to save the composition?

InCityDreams 4y ago

20 seconds is way too soon to get kicked out. I have this running on my phone and a PC and I'm playing 'against' myself. Only the phone keeps playing with no input..oh, no - kicked out. Stunning idea, great execution: needs just a few touches - there are a lot of musicians that would enjoy this more and a lot of people that would enjoy the hypnotic effect - take a look at https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/gregorianChoirGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/gregorianChoirGenerator.ph... - esssntially boring at the end of the day , but the kickout [edit: from this site] is too soon.

vivegi 4y ago

A save/export functionality would be awesome.

paulkrush 4y ago

Yeah, this has been covered in the past. Yeah, I should go back and read the comments from then. It's still a fun site.

paulkrush 4y ago
It should be https://plink.in/ https://plink.in/ But I can't edit the URL...
- pimlottc 4y ago
  Just resubmit then, there’s no penalty
paulkrush 4y ago
HN in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089901 But it was this site: http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink/ http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink/

allears 4y ago

Site uses invalid certificate. Certificate is registered to casestudies.dinahmoe.com.

pimlottc 4y ago

Could use a bit of onboarding, I spent a minute tapping the squares on the left and not understanding why it Wasn’t doing anything. But fun when I figured out I’m supposed to be touching the area to the right to make sounds.

paulkrush 4y ago
You can hold the mouse down to advance. This is all I have figured out.
paulkrush 4y ago
Click on the colored squares to change the sound

chaosprint 4y ago

Very interesting idea and very good experience. Love the visual design. Would be happy to see it in detail but I guess it is not open-source? A phenomenon I observe is that when many of us are at the same place, right after one person start to click and drag, the rest start to do the same thing. But after a while, I found that available synths are quite limited so I close the page. I guess the creator can get some statistics and test with different sound making possibilities. Can have some genres preferences such as Melody or Noise feast... An idea is to use Glicol.js(https://glicol.js.org/ https://glicol.js.org/) as the audio engine instead of the raw Web Audio API and save the result somewhere so it can be reused for research or future composition. The usage of Glicol like this can be found on https://synth.is/ https://synth.is/ Some socials would be even better. On Glicol website(https://glicol.org https://glicol.org) there is also an App for collaborative music live coding where at least we can change the name and chat as comments. All in all, I see great potential in this App. I feel that the best place for it is actually not here in HN or other place you share links, but allocated in different museums like Tate. I once thought about setting up some collaborative live coding devices that way. But this is apparently a better fit for the museum context for its intuitiveness!

stevenalowe 4y ago

Tremendous fun!

mkaic 4y ago

This is so fun! Spent 10 minutes just jamming out. I think the scale and time quantizations are what make it truly fun to use, because it's almost hard to make anything sound bad! Love it.

stemlord 4y ago
Am I the only one who thinks it's lame that nothing sounds bad? Makes me feel like I'm playing with a children's toy. I don't feel like I've done something interesting by playing in tune with others since it's all in tune... it restricts possibilities drastically
- meowface 4y ago
  I agree with you, but, pitch-stuff aside, the time issue is an inescapable constraint. You can't have perfectly live simultaneous collaborative playing over the internet; things will inevitably be out-of-time for many. Due to the speed of light, you actually can never reasonably achieve this for two people maximally separated across Earth, even with hypothetical perfect technology and latency at its theoretical minimum. If the participants are both very close in physical space, like on a LAN or something close to it, latency could potentially be minimized enough to make it acceptable, but that's pretty much it. If your goal is to make something as accessible as possible to as many global internet users as possible, you either need a) some degree of time quantization (which makes it more rigid and less musical and creative) or b) some kind of buffering and/or turn-taking system (basically, overdubbing, which makes it less "live-collaborative" / "jam-like" and potentially less enjoyable to participate in compared to something more live). At least, this is my understanding of the problem. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
  - xnorswap 4y ago
    In a large orchestra, you can have people sitting 10m away from each other which given the slow speed of sound is 30ms between them. A 60ms round-trip means that if they were to each try to play in time with the other by sound it would get horrendously out of sync quickly. Which is why the conductor is so important. I'd guess concert players must have to train themselves to "tune out" what they're hearing and focus on the conductor because the whole thing is set up for the benefit of the audience.

danbmil99 4y ago

I'm getting a cert error

andybak 4y ago
Me too.

feoren 4y ago

I'm confused, it doesn't look like it's possible to actually do anything on this site. There's a bunch of already-completed projects you want me to look at described with text that runs outside of its bounding box, and when I manage to actually figure out how to click on one of the projects, it's one of those awful full-screen ad-pages where you write one sentence with a huge banner image and I have to scroll a page down to read the next sentence? Is the title clickbait? You don't seem at all interested in having me create any sort of music. You seem interested in selling me on something that Beck did.

paulkrush 4y ago
What?, no this is real. The URL is wrong. I put in "plink.in" and HN added "test." or something... Go to https://plink.in/ https://plink.in/ and click "play now". You "Jam" with other random people. It "makes" you sound good. I don't know music, but I have a feeling that anyone who does would just bash this for being superficial.
- TonyTrapp 4y ago
  Hacker News uses the canonical link attribute of the site, if present. The canonical link to your site, according to the HTML header, is test.plink.in. You should fix that because not only Hacker News will get confused by that. That said, it's a nice toy!
  - rzzzt 4y ago
    Yep, just wanted to share it with friends and the link preview thing on Facebook also grabs the rel="canonical" URL.

abledon 4y ago

https://plink.in/ https://plink.in/ everyone! This is the best site I have used in the past 2 years. Wow. I was laughing at all the melodies my teammate kept making, then i tried to syncopate and throw in a competing solo. at one point we ('parental cougar' and 'developed gerbil') had the call & response blues solo thing going. This is HILARIOUS! Well Done!!!!!!!! augmentatations: - Hotkeys to switch instruments, - AWSD or arrow keys to navigate up/down, R/F or other keys to go up/down by 2 or 3 jumps

conradfr 4y ago

How did this get upvoted without the correct url? This is fun though.

psyclobe 4y ago

Ok that was fun

agentwiggles 4y ago

This is wildly cool. At one point I locked in with another user for about a minute or two, we were taking cues from each other and getting into little call-response counterpoint kinda patterns. Every once in a while when I'm playing with other musicians, I hit this little moment of magic where both people start to smile - there's something happening, you're working together. That feeling is one of the most joyful human experiences I know of. I started to feel that same smile creep across my face when I synced up with whatever anonymous stranger was playing at the same time as me. We were dancing back and forth, trading high and low voices. This a really fun little toy. What an awesome thing, to enable that brief moment of joy and connection with another, anonymously online while I sat here on the toilet. :) Thanks for sharing.

malikNF 4y ago
>At one point I locked in with another user for about a minute or two, we were taking cues from each other and getting into little call-response counterpoint kinda patterns Same, this is amazing, loved the site and spent more time on there than I expected. Really well done OP. This is one of the best things I have seen here on HN. Thank you OP.
sixQuarks 4y ago
Were you pooping to the sounds of the beat?

cush 4y ago

The URL is wrong. Should be https://plink.in https://plink.in

dang 4y ago
https://test.plink.in https://test.plink.in was listed as the canonical URL, and our software uses those when it finds them. I've reverted that now. Thanks!

cush 4y ago

This is so fun!! Really needs keyboard support though

drewbeck 4y ago

Cool as butts, dang.

IAmGraydon 4y ago

This is awesome. Also, I’ve never seen a site get my iPhone this hot! Anyone else experiencing this? I’m guessing it has a massive processor load.

owenpalmer 4y ago

Super cool!

jb_s 4y ago

This is amazing I do wish you could unlock different modes and step outside of just the pentatonic scale (expert mode?) but hey, awesome thing, I'm having great fun :-)

em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
I agree. Starting newcomers with just the pentatonic is smart, cause it is hard to screw up musically!

georgeoliver 4y ago

I remember the first web browser pentatonic scale music toy I found (can't remember the name, but the one with the 8x8ish grid where you click squares to play them on the beat), and just how amazingly fun it was! I feel like we still haven't seen the full potential of networked instruments, so far the focus still seems to be on virtual jamming.

driver8_ 4y ago

This is super cool, I jammed with some strangers!

Pr0ject217 4y ago

Super cool! It would also be interesting if you could upload samples. And, play the role of the team's mixer by adjusting the relative balances of each lane in real-time, and find a space for each element using EQ/panning/delay/reverb.

akomtu 4y ago

Some potential see here I. A few ideas. Add drum sounds. Make it a circle: distance from center will be the pitch, and an arrow moving clockwise will be the time. Allow to draw lines: when such a line crosses a pitch circumference, it will make a sound. Line color will be instrument type. The time arrow will keep revolving around the center, playing the pattern over and over. You'll basically draw music this way.

capableweb 4y ago
> Add drum sounds. Tried it for a bit, and definitely came across some percussion sounds. Hihats for sure, and something like a tom was there too I think.

d23 4y ago

The way everyone comes and goes, temporary beings on a stage making temporary music together is mesmerizing. Beautiful and wildly addictive.

fit2rule 4y ago

PhantomBKB 4y ago

This is absolutely gold! Whoever made this wins the internet

withoutsnow 4y ago

It shows potential but still remains a toy for now, reminding me of the looping app on iPad where you can add or remove loops to compose music. You will never fail, but that's the problem: improvisation often comes with risk and that makes us exciting. Can learn different things from other interesting web-based interfaces: https://glicol.org https://glicol.org https://gibber.cc https://gibber.cc https://roland50.studio https://roland50.studio

lawrencechen 4y ago
This multiplayer live coding/composition in lisp is worth checking out: https://youtu.be/v4rcAIVvPQ8?t=3591 https://youtu.be/v4rcAIVvPQ8?t=3591 (video linked to in gibber.cc's homepage, which features gibber.cc in other segments)

Markoff 4y ago

I don't find the music epic at all, it produces some cheap synth music far from epic Hans Zimmer music.

gloosx 4y ago

This is golden, just hopped in on bass and it`s THAT FEELING of a randomly arranged jamming band

IndySun 4y ago

I touch to start, the graphic fades to black... and that's it. I will have to take peoples words for it.

IndySun 4y ago

Is it like https://endlesss.fm/ https://endlesss.fm/ ?

uhuruity 4y ago

This was great. It recreated the ephemeral joy of jamming together with a group of people. Wish there was some kind of chat feature but I guess that would be tough to moderate

r0b05 4y ago

This is mesmerizing. Bravo!

memorable 4y ago

It keeps saying there's a problem with the server, so a bit disappointing. But a lot of people tells that it's a fun game so I will try on my desktop! Thanks for this submission :)

santimoller66 4y ago

[dead]

vivegi 4y ago

Wildly addictive! Bravo. What a nice piece of software!

Breakthrough 4y ago

Are there keyboard controls? Someone I was just playing with seemed to always lock on each "note" or "half note" exactly, wasn't sure how they were doing that.