/beepbox

An online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental melodies.

Primary LanguageTypeScriptMIT LicenseMIT

BeepBox

BeepBox is an online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental melodies. Try it out here!

All song data is packaged into the URL at the top of your browser. When you make changes to the song, the URL is updated to reflect your changes. When you are satisfied with your song, just copy and paste the URL to save and share your song!

BeepBox is a passion project, and will always be free to use. If you find it valuable and have the means, any gratuity via PayPal would be appreciated!

Beep Box is developed by John Nesky.

Compiling

The source code is available under the MIT license. The code is written in TypeScript, so to compile it you'll need to install the TypeScript compiler, and to do that you'll need to have already installed node and npm.

Running the TypeScript compiler command (tsc) in the repository should output JavaScript (.js) files into the website/ folder. I also recommend installing uglify-es because I use that to create minified JavaScript (.min.js) files. I've included shells scripts that run the compiler and minifier for you.

Those who are familiar with TypeScript may be surprised to learn that I do not use any of TypeScript's module systems. Instead I use triple-slash references to include code and namespaces to keep it out of the global namespace. That means that I don't need any web pack system to be able to deploy a single JavaScript file. I don't use any other libraries so I don't need a package manager either, aside from installing npm in order to install TypeScript and Uglify. BeepBox is relatively self-contained.

Code

The code is divided into several folders.

The synth/ folder has just the code you need to be able to play BeepBox songs out loud, and you could use this code in your own projects, like a web game. After compiling the synth code, open website/synth_example.html to see a demo using it.

The editor/ folder has additional code to display the online song editor interface. After compiling the editor code, open website/index.html to see the editor interface.

The player/ folder has a miniature song player interface for embedding on other sites.

The website/ folder contains index.html files to view the interfaces, and the TypeScript compiler is configured to output JavaScript files into this folder.