osctet, a new tracker
BotB Academy Bulletins
 
 
210700
https://jangler.github.io/osctet/

feat. demo tracks by myself, damifortune, agargara, and syntheticgoddess! also feat. microtuning, pattern zoom, and a synth/sampler engine.

i'd like to shout out the aforementioned folks for their testing, feedback, and encouragement - it was wonderful working with y'all!
 
 
210702
Level 25 Mixist
Lasertooth
 
 
 
post #210702 :: 2025.02.11 7:58am :: edit 2025.02.11 8:01am
  
  nitrofurano, cabbage drop, ASIKWUSpulse, damifortune and Jangler liēkd this
This looks very cool! "Modulate oscillators with PCM samples" is promising.
 
 
210704
Level 18 Chipist
Stupe
 
 
 
post #210704 :: 2025.02.11 8:05am
  
  mirageofher, lasersphaser, cabbage drop, Prestune, Da Flarf, damifortune and Jangler liēkd this
Woah amazing work. Elegantly pulling off everything trackers aren't supposed to do. And the interface looks great. An extremely pleasant surprise this morning
 
 
210707
Level 31 Chipist
damifortune
 
 
 
post #210707 :: 2025.02.11 8:39am
  
  lasersphaser, cabbage drop, Jangler and Da Flarf liēkd this
i'm so excited to see what people make with this - it's an extremely cool piece of software!
 
 
210709
Level 18 Chipist
retrokid104
 
 
 
post #210709 :: 2025.02.11 8:59am
  
  Collidy, mirageofher, Viraxor, VirtualMan, nitrofurano, cabbage drop, ItsDuv, ASIKWUSpulse and SRB2er liēkd this
cue the format request thread
 
 
210711
Level 12 Mixist
Da Flarf
 
 
post #210711 :: 2025.02.11 9:15am
  
  retrokid104 liēkd this
@retrokid104 zaptracker 2 when?
 
 
210715
Level 21 Grafxicist
Ahornberg
 
 
 
post #210715 :: 2025.02.11 9:33am
  
  VirtualMan, cabbage drop, damifortune and Jangler liēkd this
reminds me on Faunatone
 
 
210717
Level 29 Chipist
Jangler
 
 
 
post #210717 :: 2025.02.11 9:43am
  
  mirageofher, lasersphaser, Ahornberg, cabbage drop, gotoandplay and damifortune liēkd this
it's very much an iteration on faunatone's design! one day i would like to back-port some of the osctet ergonomy to faunatone as well
 
 
210724
Level 22 Chipist
SRB2er
 
 
 
post #210724 :: 2025.02.11 12:55pm
  
  nitrofurano and cabbage drop liēkd this
no way, a new tracker in 2025

"we eating good fellas"

(currently unable to try this atm but omg when i do it's gonna be so peak I can already tell)
 
 
210731
Level 28 Chipist
agargara
 
 
 
post #210731 :: 2025.02.11 5:24pm :: edit 2025.02.11 5:24pm
  
  mirageofher, damifortune, cabbage drop, myo and Jangler liēkd this
Osctet is sooo good!! My favorite features are the powerful modular synth engine, microtonal support, and of course, PATTERN ZOOM!

But some other little details I love :
- The design decision to keep channels so simple with just modulation/pressure commands with single-digit values. Since you can portamento between values, you don't need more granularity than that. the minimalist approach makes writing so much faster and lets you have lots of channels on screen at once.
- The tooltips are so helpful, it made learning the tracker super quick and easy.
- Streeetch Paaaste
- I never thought I would like smooth-scroll but this tracker has changed my mind!

Osctet is rapidly becoming one of my favorite music making tools ... super awesome job jangler, you rock!
 
 
210732
Level 22 Mixist
ItsDuv
 
 
 
post #210732 :: 2025.02.11 5:36pm
  
  Stupe, SRB2er and cabbage drop liēkd this
loaded it up, got confused
looks sick, good shit
 
 
210736
Level 23 Chipist
syntheticgoddess
 
 
 
post #210736 :: 2025.02.11 8:15pm
  
  ItsDuv, Jangler, damifortune and cabbage drop liēkd this
i like osctet and i hope you do too
 
 
210739
Level 31 Chipist
damifortune
 
 
 
post #210739 :: 2025.02.11 10:29pm
  
  mirageofher, petet and Jangler liēkd this
@agargara i agree about your comment on smooth scroll - not usually my thing, but with this tracker specifically and its zoomable grid, it's totally what makes sense

my favorite features are among the more esoteric ones, but the fact that they're there make it reeeeally fun:

- playing midi keyboard + keyboard sequencer input is actually good for microtones for once, with the space of an octave being preserved on the keyboard. the finer details can be handled after, but feeling around for harmonies and playing around with ideas is 1000% easier to me

- relatedly, it feels super accessible that the microtunings are presented along with their note names/enharmonics and corresponding to familiar terminology (A-G). to be honest i think for anyone even thinking of trying that someday, this is the place to do it

- "space selected events evenly" shortcut. a way to play with time very easily, especially in conjunction with...

- "stretch paste" shortcut to fill a selected area with clipboard

- and the tempo controls, and the dang interpolate function. it's kind of the best thing since pxtone portamento

- 'Random' option in the mod matrix for instruments, as well as pitch modulation (and other fun goodies) with how flexible the generators and automations are. just feels so fluid
 
 
210740
Level 20 Mixist
Luigi64
 
 
 
post #210740 :: 2025.02.11 11:04pm
  
  lasersphaser, nitrofurano, ItsDuv, Jangler and SRB2er liēkd this
This thing is amazing (it got me excited like when furnace first came out) but I have to admit that I am really not used to making music on one big pxtone-style pattern like this.

Jangler, I think osctet would benefit from like, a phrase feature, where you have another tab in the editor where you can make little sequences of columns of notes, and then you can place those sequences in the pattern at any position, so you get the convenience and size benefits of pattern-based trackers, but you don't have to deal with patterns when you don't want to.

please take that into consideration :)
 
 
210743
Level 29 Chipist
Jangler
 
 
 
post #210743 :: 2025.02.12 5:09am
  
  lasersphaser, ItsDuv and Luigi64 liēkd this
thanks for the feedback! "some type of phrase feature" was definitely present in the initial desiderata i started from, but i was never able to come up with a design that felt worthy of inclusion... the closest i got was "sunvox-style patterns except you place them directly in pattern-space instead of on a separate timeline" but there were too many unanswered UI questions to move forward with it

so i see the value but it probably won't happen in the near-term, between life stuff(tm) and other development priorities
 
 
210744
Level 24 XHBist
sulkaritari
 
 
 
post #210744 :: 2025.02.12 6:44am
  
  lasersphaser, Jangler, ItsDuv and damifortune liēkd this
this is the coolest thing ever. and the demo songs are all amazing! i have been having a good time making a little arpeggio song and then listening to it remapped into many edos
 
 
210745
Level 28 Chipist
gotoandplay
 
 
 
post #210745 :: 2025.02.12 8:11am :: edit 2025.02.12 8:12am
  
  damifortune liēkd this
Insert marker and "go to marker" shortcuts may mitigate that in the short term if it's mainly a navigational quality of life thing. I think that's how 1tracker handles navigation of parts of a song while keeping it as no patterns

edit: apologies if this is already in there, haven't checked yet
 
 
210758
Level 31 Chipist
damifortune
 
 
 
post #210758 :: 2025.02.12 1:34pm :: edit 2025.02.12 1:35pm
  
  gotoandplay liēkd this
purely spitballing off that suggestion but a combination of "marker #" and "ctrl+# to go to #" would serve a really great navigational purpose while preserving the "no pattern order" setup
 
 
210760
Level 29 Chipist
nitrofurano
 
 
 
post #210760 :: 2025.02.12 2:58pm
  
  mirageofher and Luigi64 liēkd this
  
  Blast_Brothers hæitd this
all these features are amazing, and some innovative! - but I don't know if we can say some features are missing or hard to find, like importing/exporting .mid, .xm and .txt files... (for example, even counting with some information lost in the process)
 
 
210766
Level 28 Mixist
petet
 
 
 
post #210766 :: 2025.02.12 6:33pm
  
  myo, Kaytse, Jangler, damifortune and syntheticgoddess liēkd this
this is so damn incredible. also ups and downs notation is the biggest game-changer here IMO--it meshes with the way i want to write so much better than any other microtonal input system out there
 
 
210770
Level 23 Chipist
syntheticgoddess
 
 
 
post #210770 :: 2025.02.12 8:03pm
  
  Collidy, nitrofurano, Blast_Brothers and avoset liēkd this
nitro, i'm confused about what you mean with import/export of specifically .mid, .xm, and .txt.. specifically, i don't think there's any mandate or essential need for a piece of music software to be interoperable with other software or standards and i'm not sure if the thesis is that lacking interoperability constitutes missing a feature

to be more specific, while i think that .mid import/export might be neat (though half of osctet is the synth engine, so i struggle to see the utility of midi export), something like .xm is so totally different in species that i'm lost on the use case
 
 
210779
Level 29 Chipist
Jangler
 
 
 
post #210779 :: 2025.02.13 5:39am :: edit 2025.02.13 8:37am
  
  damifortune and gotoandplay liēkd this
re: markers - there is currently a reserved "section marker" pattern event in the code, so that could be used for a "go to marker" function if folks feel that would be helpful! i normally just navigate with home/end/scrollbar/alt+scroll

re: notation/input - i agree! after experimenting with a bunch of different approaches using faunatone, "pyth-spine" systems like ups & downs are what i ended up using 100% of the time. imo most other options are pretty "write-only" and don't let you apply the mental tools you've already developed if you're steeped in traditional western music notation
 
 
210780
Level 29 Mixist
mirageofher
 
 
 
post #210780 :: 2025.02.13 5:40am :: edit 2025.02.13 5:41am
  
  nitrofurano, damifortune, sean and Kaytse liēkd this
this software sounds awesome based on what ive read so far. though im quite busy lately due to Life, im looking forward to trying this out sometime in the future. ive always wanted to dip my toes (maybe even ankles) into michael tones, and osc tet might just be the thing that allows for it 😏😎🔥😌🤝
 
 
210782
Level 9 Mixist
mothnog
 
 
post #210782 :: 2025.02.13 6:49am
  
  damifortune liēkd this
This looks really cool (and is strangely motivating me to want to learn trackers as someone who hasn't done much with them yet, even though this is probably an unconventional first choice. It looks really clean and smooth to use) BUT its been giving me lots of lag and stuttery audio during playback
 
 
210791
Level 29 Chipist
Jangler
 
 
 
post #210791 :: 2025.02.13 8:34am
  
  agargara and damifortune liēkd this
hi mothnog! could you check out github issue #4
and run through the diagnostics i suggested in that thread? if you're not on github it's fine to let me know here or in discord. i would love to solve audio stutter issues but it's been difficult since i can't reproduce them on my own computer
 
 
210846
Level 22 Chipist
Viravax
 
 
 
post #210846 :: 2025.02.14 8:23am
  
  Jangler, agargara, damifortune, lasersphaser and doctorn0gloff liēkd this
honestly when it comes to newer trackers, I find this one's UI like incredibly simple to understand and get used to versus others and I just want to say a massive congrats on that.

Sometimes the biggest barrier to entry on these new trackers are their UI and understanding how to use them properly, but this one is one of the few where I felt like I could just get going almost immediately and didn't feel lost.

One thing I was wondering, is there any plans in the future to allow people to have like an import/export of interval tables?

It would be really cool to have ways to just export tables and allow people to import them so we can share them easily amongst each other without having to manually input them. If there's a way to do that already though and I missed it I'm sorry!! I'm still getting my hands on it all
 
 
210853
Level 29 Chipist
Jangler
 
 
 
post #210853 :: 2025.02.14 10:30am :: edit 2025.02.14 10:42am
  
  nitrofurano, agargara and Viravax liēkd this
the tuning format that can be imported is .scl, which is a text-based format that's probably the most widespread way to share tunings online. i didn't program an export feature because the only tunings you can generate in the tracker are equal-step ones, which can be defined by just the two parameters of {scale period frequency ratio} and {number of steps} - so for those you can just say "17edo" or "9ed3/2" or "13ed3" and it describes the entire tuning, rather than needing to enumerate all the steps

edit: scale export is probably a good idea though! so that you can try out the unequal scales that other folks have imported
 
 
210857
Level 22 Chipist
Viravax
 
 
 
post #210857 :: 2025.02.14 12:17pm
  
  lasersphaser and damifortune liēkd this
Ah okay thank you for that explanation!

I'm still new to the microtuning and scaling world so I didn't even know .scl files existed and can be imported so thank you for that!

Gonna try them out!
 
 
210881
Level 28 Chipist
agargara
 
 
 
post #210881 :: 2025.02.14 8:57pm
  
  nitrofurano, Jangler, petet, Stupe and Collidy liēkd this
I was also thinking it might be cool to store the whole scala file when importing, including title+comments, and display those for informational purposes, since I'm liable to forget which scale I imported! Allowing export would be a plus too!
 
 
211064
Level 8 Mixist
nazrin
 
 
post #211064 :: 2025.02.17 1:58pm :: edit 2025.02.17 3:35pm
  
  Jangler and Collidy liēkd this
I like it, thank you!
 
 
211111
Level 13 Criticist
Tiido
 
 
post #211111 :: 2025.02.18 3:30pm
I tried to run it but I got greeted with application cannot start message, with 0xC0000005 error code.
 
 
211113
Level 23 Chipist
syntheticgoddess
 
 
 
post #211113 :: 2025.02.18 4:13pm
  
  Jangler liēkd this
what OS?
 
 
211175
Level 13 Criticist
Tiido
 
 
post #211175 :: 2025.02.19 6:44pm
  
  Jangler and Collidy liēkd this
Win7 x64 SP1, which I imagine is the problem and I wouldn't be too unhappy if nothing will be done around it lol.
 
 
211197
Level 29 Chipist
Jangler
 
 
 
post #211197 :: 2025.02.20 4:33am
pretty sure that's the problem! i should provide more detail about supported OS versions on the website
 
 
211201
Level 12 Mixist
Da Flarf
 
 
post #211201 :: 2025.02.20 7:35am
  
  Stupe, Collidy, retrokid104 and SweatyNoodle hæitd this
  
  Luigi64 liēkd this
the mistake is using windows 7 in 2025
 
 
211292
Level 14 Chipist
Wegfrei
 
 
post #211292 :: 2025.02.21 12:14pm
  
  Collidy, Da Flarf, nitrofurano and SRB2er liēkd this
can it run doom?
 
 
211574
Level 29 Chipist
nitrofurano
 
 
 
post #211574 :: 2025.02.24 5:33am
  
  Collidy and Luigi64 liēkd this
@Wegfrei probably tetris or pong
@Da_Flarf actually, whatever version, not only 7! xD
 
 
211587
Level 18 Chipist
Stupe
 
 
 
post #211587 :: 2025.02.24 8:59am
  
  Collidy and Da Flarf hæitd this
  
  damifortune and Lasertooth liēkd this
Yea if you've already upgraded to win7 in 2025 I'm not very impressed with your resolve
 
 
211621
Level 28 Chipist
agargara
 
 
 
post #211621 :: 2025.02.24 4:02pm
  
  lasersphaser, nitrofurano, Jangler, Collidy, doctorn0gloff, damifortune, Lasertooth and Luigi64 liēkd this
Hello, I have made a simple file sharing website for osctet modules and instruments!

https://osctethub.agargara.com/
 
 
212230
Level 7 Criticist
wyrdash
 
 
post #212230 :: 2025.03.04 2:49pm
  
  Collidy and lasersphaser liēkd this
This is awesome. I'm gonna try to learn how to use it and maybe eventually start some BotBing with it!!
 
 
212231
Level 23 Chipist
syntheticgoddess
 
 
 
post #212231 :: 2025.03.04 3:16pm
  
  Collidy liēkd this
it's become one of my daily driving tools! the ease of interpolation is choice
 
 

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