Show HN: Am-1 Arpeggio Machine – A Love Letter to Berlin School Music

1•willstepp•48m ago

I have been entranced by Berlin School music for years. I love those evolving and interwoven arpeggios. Latching an arp is often my favorite way to noodle on a synth, and yes it’s because I can’t play to save my life.

Last month I got tired of waiting for someone else to build my dream arp machine, so I built my own in the form of a web synth. It is purpose-built for sculpting and performing with melodies. I call it the AM-1 Arpeggio Machine.

My next goal is to port the web engine into hardware format (using the Daisy Seed). But in the meantime, since the web app is perfectly usable, I figured why not make it free and open source. It can be used as a fun and interactive patch tool for the eventual hardware version.

App: https://crux.garden/zacos/am-1 Source: https://github.com/zacos-tech

Thanks, Will

Comments

minraws•26m ago

I like the idea and I do understand the impulse.

I've been messing around with DAWs and soft synths since college, as a hobbyist, and my immediate reaction is that I am struggling a little to see what AM-1 is doing that hasn't already existed in more mature tools for quite a while.

Have you tried something like Stochas, for example? There are a bunch of free and paid sequencers/arpeggiators that already go pretty deep into evolving patterns, probability, polyrhythms, variations, live manipulation, etc.

Even just chaining a few free plugins together in a DAW seems like it would give you quite a bit more flexibility than this right now.

I do think the hardware angle could make this much more interesting, especially if the interface is designed in an interesting way.

But looking at the web version on its own, I'm not really seeing the unique idea or workflow yet compared to what already exists.

That doesn't mean I think you shouldn't build it, obviously. Building exactly the instrument you personally want is a perfectly good reason to make something. I'm mostly curious what you see as the part of AM-1 that it does differently or better than the stuff that's already out there.

willstepp•2m ago

I appreciate you taking a look and giving some honest feedback. To answer your question, the AM-1 is more of an instrument designed to make playing layered arpeggios (and sequences to an extent) immediate and fun. This is a machine that is made for performance, which is a lot of what Berlin School music is to me. A tool like Stochas is amazing, but it's a sequencing tool, for music production purposes. The AM-1 you could use in your living room, or in a live performance (talking about the hardware version in the works, not so much this iteration).

Basically, I wanted to give people a way to have fun with arps and make some cool music in the process.