nowfound

Life & fun · September 13, 2025

CLAVIER-36 – A programming environment for generative music

CLAVIER-36 is a programming environment for generative music. Programs are laid out in a two-dimensional grid, and evolve over time according to a fixed set of rules. The system is much like a cellular automaton, in that most of the rules governing the evolution of the system are local. C36 programs describe sequences of discrete events in time. The environment includes a primitive sampler, as a self-contained means of interpreting these events as sound. For full expressivity, though, the system is best used as a generator of data for interpretation by an external musical instrument, such as…

CLAVIER-36 – A programming environment for generative music launched on September 13, 2025 with 146 votes, #222 of 8,160 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.

Visit clavier36.com ↗Alternativestop 3% of September 2025

In plain words

CLAVIER-36 is a programming environment for creating generative music using two-dimensional grids that evolve according to cellular automaton-like rules. Programs describe sequences of discrete events over time, with a built-in sampler for sound generation or external synthesis via MIDI instruments. Designed for musicians and programmers interested in algorithmic composition, the system operates locally within grid cells, allowing complex musical patterns to emerge from simple rule sets.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

CLAVIER-36 is a programming environment for generative music. Programs are laid out in a two-dimensional grid, and evolve over time according to a fixed set of rules. The system is much like a cellular automaton, in that most of the rules governing the evolution of the system are local. C36 programs describe…

Does a similar job

all alternatives →
  • AudioCraft2023 · ai.meta.com · ▲285

    Generative AI for audio made simple

  • Mozart AI2025 · mozartai.com · ▲694

    A Generative Audio Workstation with VSTs

  • An algorithmic audio landscape2024 · ambient.garden · ▲193

    This is an web audio experiment I've been wanting to do for a long time. Basically an ambient music composition, but all the sound elements are laid out in space, and that musical space can be explored freely. It's definitely inspired by in-world music that sometimes appears in games. I basically took that concept, keeping the music aspect, and dropping the entire "game" aspect. I also turned it into a more "traditional" non-interactive album, but since I started with code, why not program the whole thing? Had a blast making the entire album from code, the complete source for the album is…

  • Brev.ai2024 · brev.ai · ▲262

    Create quality music from text instantly, free & online

  • Typebeat: Keyboard-controlled music sequencer, sampler, and synth2022 · github.com · ▲201

    Keyboard-controlled music sequencer, sampler, and synth - kofigumbs/typebeat

  • An attempt to rethink a music sequencer design2017 · github.com · ▲305

    Libre music sequencer for desktop and mobile platforms - helio-fm/helio-sequencer

More life & fun this month

the category →

Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part

Launched alongside, September 2025

the whole month →
  • YouMind▲1,223

    The first AI creation studio where learning meets writing

    AI · 2025 · youmind.com

  • The site hit #1 on HN about a year ago. Got enough traffic that I turned it into a proper API. What's there: - REST API — 35k products, manually filterable by category, free key, 60 req/min - CLI — npx anycrap random -c food - faker.js plugin — bundled, no API call, works offline - HuggingFace dataset — full 35k rows for ML/training https://anycrap.shop/developers

    AI · 2025 · anycrap.shop

  • I made a built-from scratch Wayland Compositor to display any GUI app* in the terminal! I think there is a lot of unexplored potential in custom Wayland compositors, a lot of really cool things you can embed existing applications into! So, I started with embedding apps into the terminal because that is the easiest input/output (output is just utf-8 and I use the great `chafa` library for that, and I just read from stdin for the input). If you have any other ideas for cool Wayland compositors, let me know. I purposedly wrote 80% the app in Typescript to appeal to the most developers and…

    Dev tools · 2025 · github.com

  • IR

    Years ago I stumbled across a basic version of this concept and it stuck with me. I knew if I was ever going to take on such a project, it would need to be flawless, but without coding experience it was just another idea that would never happen. By the end of 2024, as AI coding tools exploded everywhere, I finally had a way to make it real. I started from zero knowledge and spent months collaborating with AI agents as a learning experience. Every pixel and every function went through me. The AI translated what I asked for into code, but every decision was human. I didn't use existing OS…

    AI · 2025 · mitchivin.com

  • Ada▲910

    Your own AI data analyst

    AI · 2025 · ada.im

  • Turn Product Images into Scroll-Stopping Video Ads

    Growth · 2025 · vidau.ai