Alternatives
Products that do what I launched a MIDI controller and IG banned me 48 hours later does
The MIDI controller I wanted didn't exist, so I built it. I: - posted it to reddit, got 50k views, sold a few (including to some big names in the EDM world) - used it in a session with a Wu Tang affiliate (got paid 30 chicken wings, all flats) - got banned from Instagram in 48 hours, right after one of my favorite producers followed my account. Build Details: - 2.0mm 5052 powder coated aluminum body, modeled in fusion, laser cut and bent by sendcutsend - Solid walnut endcaps - SLA keycaps - gateron switches - custom switch matrix pcb - custom c++ firmware - rp2350 mcu - i2c oled display -…
- 1IU
Hi Hacker News, This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online. So please watch the video and tell me what you think https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me. I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for…
Jan 2026
- 2IB
2014 · freetuner.co
- 3MM
2012 · jpc.heroku.com
- 4TF
2015 · github.com
- 5IB
2020 · timdaub.github.io
- 6M2
2017 · midipadapp.com
- 7IV
So, I've never written a line of Rust in my life. I wouldn't know an `&mut this` from a mutandis. But I saw a tweet about a month ago that said, in this new era of AI, you'd be able to just take a library that you love, throw a TUI around it, and call it an app. So I spent about 200 bucks last month, here's what I came up with: Imbolc is a DAW that runs entirely in your terminal. It talks to scsynth over OSC and ships 58 instruments and 39 effects. VSTs are a work in progress, also GarageBand loops if you want to recreate "Umbrella". The codebase is about 60k? lines of Rust across 5 crates,…
Feb 2026 · github.com
- 8FO
2020 · signal.vercel.app
- 9IB
Hey HN! Last week I was working on a website and needed a way to synchronise visuals with live music. I've used MIDI controllers for this before, but I am travelling right now and don't have mine with me. So I had the crazy idea to build a browser extension that uses the keyboard as input and includes a sequencer. I gave myself 24 to work on it. It ended up taking longer (of course), specially since I ended up creating a demo, a small landing, docs, and an intro video. Took me one week from idea to launch (pushed quite a bit tbh). Features: - Works as a browser extension. Atm distributed…
2024 · minitap.io
- 10MF
2012 · musicrage.org
- 11PP
Write up of an embedded project I made to control my analogue synthesizer. Happy to answer any questions or provide any further details of this project if wanted.
2024 · doug.lon.dev
- 12GA
2017 · twitter.com
- 13AL
A buddy and I decided to hack on this little project this weekend, putting in about 12 hours. It's running Ruby on Rails, deployed to Heroku. We tried to keep things super lean with different gems handling user accounts, mailchimp for an email list and super lean styling/layout. Everything should work well enough on mobile devices, too, so give it a look! Right now the magic all happens via the Soundcloud API (of course), but we're exploring different ways to make this appeal to a broader audience of music listeners. We'd love your feedback! Here's the site:…
2014
- 14WD
I know mentioning Michael Seibel is almost cheating, but this week he demonstrated the "leaky pipes" concept to me. Not that I know the guy, but in one of his videos he says something on the lines of "If you are unsure if you app is ready to be launched, just launch it. It's like a house with leaky pipes, just open the main, grab your tools, and start fixing wherever water is leaking". So we did it, we launched drummy earlier this week on /r/InternetIsBeautiful and we got very close to 10k users in just one day! Survived the hug of death, learned a ton, and made changes all around.…
2022 · drummy.io
- 15IJ
Hey all. For the last few years, I have been developing a software synthesizer as a side project. It's taken longer than I both hoped and feared, but earlier this week I finally shipped 1.0. Details about the synth itself are up on my website, https://lhiaudio.com/. For those who are unfamiliar, in music production, there are host applications (such as Logic Pro, Ableton Live, or REAPER) in which most of the work (such as recording or sequencing MIDI data) is done. These applications generally have some built-in tools for the actual generation and processing of audio data, but…
2018
- 16IB
Hey HN, I’m an ex-Google engineer trying to get back into music production. I needed a way to sequence my hardware synths using AI contexts without constantly switching windows, so I built this. It runs entirely in the browser using WebMIDI. No login required. It connects to your local MIDI devices (if you're on Chrome/Edge) and lets you generate patterns. Tech stack: [React / WebMIDI API / etc]. Link: www.simplychris.ai/droplets Code is a bit messy, but it works. Feedback welcome.
Dec 2025 · simplychris.ai
- 17M4
Well HN, I've finally produced something I think is worthy of sharing, but I didn't do it "in a weekend". Yeah, it's an iOS puzzle game. And yeah, it's a game I built because I wanted to play it rather than based on market research, so all this sort of makes it the antithesis of a popular HN post. But whatever. Still hoping for some of that patented (har har) expert HN feedback. Critique any part of it except the music. Also, PM me for upgrade codes, or I can post some here if there's any interest. Download (it's free):…
2012
- 18CC
2014 · controllers.cc
- 19IB
2020 · youtu.be
- 20IB
2021 · twitter.com
- 21IC
2020 · simon-frey.com
- 22IB
I used to watch hundreds of hours of lofi beats on youtube while I was coding, but I got really sick of all the ads. I decided to build a better alternative - It's a configurable space for you to hang out online while you work, with a ton of relaxing music and backgrounds. Its got useful tools built in like a timer to keep track of how long you've been locked in, and a notepad for todos or scribbling down ideas while you work. Honestly this is the first tool I've built that I personally use every day, so I'm hoping some of you out there can get some use out of it too!
2025 · lofizone.com
- 23M2
ok...even though im a bit sleepy, i would love to get a lot of feedback from people regarding my website...also what are the ways I can protect myself from hackers in this situation?
2011 · ilov3u.net
- 24
This toy retro synth installs and runs on esp32-s3 or p4 as an ELF file under BreezyBox firmware. It uses my work-in-progress immediate mode TUI library in C. Web-based version via emscripten: https://mini000.itch.io/beeper Source code: https://github.com/valdanylchuk/beeper Demo video running on Tanmatsu (esp32-p4): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCH9XYZ7QB0 The main challenge I was going for was actually to find a nice minimal set of controls for a subtractive synth. Usually there are 40-50 of them in "simple" synths; I ended up with 16.…
Jul 2026 · mini000.itch.io
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