Rhythm Coders

Rhythm Coders

Old computer parts form a band, and you're the producer.

Drag a hard drive, floppy drive, modem, CRT monitor or speech chip onto the stage and it starts playing its own loop. Stack up to seven performers to build a track. Every part plays over the same four chords (Am, F, C, G), and new parts come in on the next bar, so anything you put together stays in time and in key.

What's in it

- 25 performers in 5 acts: Beats (a hip-hop crew), Effects (a punk band), Melody (a jazz combo), Voices (a choir in robes) and Choir. Each one has its own sound, animation and costume.
- 5 hidden bonus shows: find the right trio of parts and the stage turns into a disco. A mirror ball comes down, two old-tech guests walk in (a telegraph, a gramophone, a tube radio, a rotary phone), and they play eight bars of new music with a drum roll, two drops and a breakdown.
- Boot Sequence: the biggest secret. It's sixteen bars of robot house where a vocoder sings "the machines are alive," the power cuts out before the last chorus, and an acid bassline comes in.
- Overclocking: push the tempo above 130 BPM and the band starts to glow, shake, sweat and finally smoke.
- Live FX pads: crash, drop, stutter, tape stop, filter sweep, half time and double time, all played in time with the beat.
- Mixer and recorder: mute, solo and set the volume of each part, save up to six lineups, and record your mix to an audio file.

Controls

Action	How
Add a part	Click or drag its icon, or press its key (`1`–`0`, `Q`–`T`, `A`–`G`, `Z`–`B`)
Play / pause	`Space`
Tempo	`-` / `=`
Live FX	`Y` `U` `I` `O` `P` `H` `J`
Mute everything	`M`
Mute a part	Click the performer

It works on desktop and on phones. It needs a network connection, because the sounds stream in when the page loads.

Made with

Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with no framework. All the music runs through Strudel (AGPL-3.0): each performer is a Strudel pattern.

Third-party assets: Sonic Pi drum samples (CC0), WebAudioFont General MIDI instruments (MIT), the TidalCycles Dirt-Samples and tidal-drum-machines sample banks, two SampleFocus recordings (Standard License, processed), and the Fredoka and VT323 fonts (OFL). The full credits are behind the ⓘ button in the game.