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Show HN: Handel – A procedural programming language for writing songs in browser

handel-pl.github.io

11–20 of 57 posts

Re: Show HN: Handel – A procedural programming language for writing songs in browser

#11
post #9

Just FYI: Handel translates to „Trade“ in German. I think you picked it to refer to the composer „Händel”, right? Anyway I expected something different after reading the name ;)

In English he is known as Handel. At least in Dublin anyway where he first performed his Messiah so it is somewhat canonical ...

Also apparently a naturalised British citizen without the umlaut [0]

EDIT check out his signature on [0] no umlaut so he was Handel even to himself!

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)

Re: Show HN: Handel – A procedural programming language for writing songs in browser

#12
post #9

Just FYI: Handel translates to „Trade“ in German. I think you picked it to refer to the composer „Händel”, right? Anyway I expected something different after reading the name ;)

Ever tried putting an umlaut in a URL?

Re: Show HN: Handel – A procedural programming language for writing songs in browser

#13
post #2

I started building Handel some weeks ago, as a simple way of writing music with code. While the livecoding movement focuses on providing solutions for performing music live with code, and making changes on the fly -- I focused on simple song writing (one reason why I wouldn't consider Handel an esoteric language). One notable aspect of Handel is the behavior of its procedures, which are called chunks. Each chunk is c…

Hi! I built something similar: https://fergonco.org/MusicJargon/. I think you will find it interesting. It compiles to midi, though. Your browser support is quite a feature, indeed.

Had long discussions with my brother (the family musician) on how to encode chords. At some point I even used the actual UTF characters for sharp and bemol and was a total nightmare to write :D

My effort is mostly abandoned (I switched to teach my kids to actually play!). Courage!

Re: Show HN: Handel – A procedural programming language for writing songs in browser

#17
post #2

I started building Handel some weeks ago, as a simple way of writing music with code. While the livecoding movement focuses on providing solutions for performing music live with code, and making changes on the fly -- I focused on simple song writing (one reason why I wouldn't consider Handel an esoteric language). One notable aspect of Handel is the behavior of its procedures, which are called chunks. Each chunk is c…

Looks great on the first glance! I'll inspect it in detail tonight.

I'm looking for something that helps my get back into chip-tunes composing. I used to be an ImpulseTracker junkie in the past.

Re: Show HN: Handel – A procedural programming language for writing songs in browser

#19
post #18

Nice. Have you found any good workarounds for getting midi to work in Firefox or is this Chrome only?

It works in my firefox

Well, you're both slightly off. No, midi does not work in Firefox, last time I checked, Mozilla still doesn't like the security of the current API hence it hasn't been implemented.

And no, the website is not using midi at all. Midi is a protocol for sending notes between devices, but there is neither any notes to be sent nor any connections to other devices, this is all local. My guess would be that Handel is using the various Audio APIs only.

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