tek/README.md

Warning

As of 2024-09-10, I'm working hard to bring this project back to a usable state (as seen e.g. here).

I reached the limit of how much of the UI I can write imperatively, and started refactoring it in a more declarative style. I'm quite excited about how the interface logic is turning out!

Your moral support means a lot to me. Feel free to contact me on Mastodon!

(Especially if you know how to host LV2 plugin UIs in winit 😁)

• the author ❤️

tek

Tek is a MIDI sequencer, sampler, and plugin host for the Linux terminal. It's written in Rust, and targets JACK (or Pipewire's JACK implementation).

My goal is to have a pop-up scratchpad for musical ideas that doesn't get in the way of building upon them. Kind of like Ableton — but for free systems, and without all the bloat!

Besides Ableton, I'm also inspired by the workflow of trackers and various old-school hardware sequencers (of which I've broken several). I've found that every existing music-making tool takes me about 80% of the way to the music I want to make. And so, after a decade of fucking around, I've decided it's finally time to make good on my old dream to build the instrument that will take me 100% there.

A secondary goal is to make my music making environment extensible, programmable, and interoperable; the intended project format is an S-expression-based notation (EDN, Steel, or similar... though I've also been looking for an excuse to embed a Forth 😏)

You can follow my progress, my tragicomical struggles with maintaining mental health as a rogue knowledge worker in a cyberpunk dystopia, and various other trials'n'tribulations, on Mastodon.

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See demos/project.edn for the initial contents of the session.

Requirements

• Linux
• Rust toolchain
• JACK or Pipewire

Recommended

• MIDI controller
• Samples at ~/Lab/Music/pak
• Odin2 LV2 ~/.lv2/Odin2.lv2

Overview

Tek is inspired by "clip launching" workflows as exemplified by Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio, Ardour, and probably others. The main view consists of three sections:

• The arranger view corresponds to Ableton's Session and Arrangement views. It allows you to put together a musical composition as a sequence of phrases, playing simultaneously across multiple tracks.
• The sequencer view allows you to edit phrases, which consist of MIDI events.
• The chain view allows you to add devices to each track. Devices determine how a given phrase will sound. Currently, there are two devices implemented: sampler and plugin.

Note

Use Tab to switch focus between views. Use Enter to exclusively focus the highlighted view, and Esc to unfocus it. When a view is focused, use the Arrow Keys and Enter to navigate. Use ; (semicolon) to open the command palette, which will list the remaining keybindings.

TODO:

• Control:
  • Customize key map
  • MIDI map
  • Scriptable
  • Command panel
  • Search panel
• Save project:
  • Preserve EDN layout
• Samples:
  • Sample browser
  • Resample
  • Repitch
  • Sample editor
  • Envelope
  • Stretch sample to BPM
  • Set BPM from sample
  • Map MIDI note to sample
  • Multisample
• Sequencer/Arranger:
  • Fix next/prev clip
  • Move clip/track/scene
  • Set track gain
  • Play from one clip, record into another
  • Offbeat of next clip starts during end of first
  • Pattern chain
  • Actually sync
• Chain:
  • Add device
  • View and connect device ports in chain view
  • Open LV2 GUI
  • Pin favorite FX parameters with *
  • Parallel monitoring chain
  • Support CLAP plugins
  • Support VST2
  • Support VST3
• Transport:
  • Focus transport to set BPM/sync/quant with .,
  • Double/halve BPM with xX
• Rendering:
  • LineBuffer for scroll?
  • Buffered rendering with e.g. needs_update (only needed if the release build becomes slow)
    • Buffered sequencer
    • Buffered chain view