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Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

flowful.app

31–40 of 123 posts

Re: Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

#31

I don't get it. I love ambient tunes and listen to them for 1-10 hours a day while doing stuff. Any time I need to focus (even when writing an email) I'll throw on my favorite ambient music. How is this any different? Why would I get a "premium" account for some random website when there's an entire catalog of ambient music on Spotify/Apple/etc that I could listen to?

Why? Because you won't get much surprise from a static recoding. This is dynamic which has its charm for some.

Re: Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

#32

Call me old fashioned but I prefer chill music that was hand crafted by a DJ blending samples from wide influences as in the Buddha Bar or Cafe Del Mar collections. I am afraid all these LoFi channels and Spotify Focus playlists songs are in reality just procedurally generated by them under some made up lables so in reality no artists are actually paid for the stream and the money (what little there is anymore) goes…

This.

There's such a vast catalog of human-composed ambient music, that I just simply don't see why someone would prefer to listen to this algorithmically generated soulless muzak.

Same goes for the "lo-fi beats for study" channels. There are so many good instrumental hip-hop albums. MF Doom instrumentals (Special Herbs series), J Dilla instrumentals, Boards of Canada, Madlib instrumentals, etc. Why listen to that trite crap? It's the equivalent of "eating out" in McDonald's.

Re: Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

#34
post #20

Is the piano detuned by intention (which is something that rather bothers my concentration)? Does the algorithm select the sounds itself? Is there information on how the "generator" works?

I just updated the FAQ ( https://flowful.app/faq ) but will post here also: I record a bunch of samples from VSTs I have. Once I have the samples I upload them to a server, which you request when you load up a song. In your browser, the generators (which is another way of saying 'tracks') then piece together these samples in ways I have coded. So for example, I might have a list of chords which sound good, and a loop…

Interesting, thanks; so these "samples" are not just the sounds which are triggered by a (Midi) track, but are the music themselves; in that case the "generator" just selects and combines pre-existing musical parts; it's not an "ab initio" music generator as we saw e.g. in MuseNet or BachBot; it's rather a kind of "automated DJ".

Re: Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

#35
post #32

Call me old fashioned but I prefer chill music that was hand crafted by a DJ blending samples from wide influences as in the Buddha Bar or Cafe Del Mar collections. I am afraid all these LoFi channels and Spotify Focus playlists songs are in reality just procedurally generated by them under some made up lables so in reality no artists are actually paid for the stream and the money (what little there is anymore) goes…

This. There's such a vast catalog of human-composed ambient music, that I just simply don't see why someone would prefer to listen to this algorithmically generated soulless muzak. Same goes for the "lo-fi beats for study" channels. There are so many good instrumental hip-hop albums. MF Doom instrumentals (Special Herbs series), J Dilla instrumentals, Boards of Canada, Madlib instrumentals, etc. Why listen to that tr…

Well a lot of them are royalty free, so I use them on streams.

Re: Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

#37
post #32

Call me old fashioned but I prefer chill music that was hand crafted by a DJ blending samples from wide influences as in the Buddha Bar or Cafe Del Mar collections. I am afraid all these LoFi channels and Spotify Focus playlists songs are in reality just procedurally generated by them under some made up lables so in reality no artists are actually paid for the stream and the money (what little there is anymore) goes…

This. There's such a vast catalog of human-composed ambient music, that I just simply don't see why someone would prefer to listen to this algorithmically generated soulless muzak. Same goes for the "lo-fi beats for study" channels. There are so many good instrumental hip-hop albums. MF Doom instrumentals (Special Herbs series), J Dilla instrumentals, Boards of Canada, Madlib instrumentals, etc. Why listen to that tr…

> There's such a vast catalog of human-composed ambient music, that I just simply don't see why someone would prefer to listen to this algorithmically generated soulless muzak.

A lot of human-composed ambient music actually has a lot of algorithmically determined elements. One of the simplest examples is using several tape loops of differing lengths (which Boards of Canada are very fond of).

Similarly if you dig into the composition and ideas behind some of Brian Eno's pieces, you will find they are rule based.

Even using a computer for doing this automatically isn't very new. It's being done by modular synthesis enthusiasts since ages.

Many of these ambient pieces would actually generate different ambient sounds for a very long time, and the "soulful" recordings thereof (on CD or Vinyl) are merely short excerpts from the actual piece.

Generating and listening to it live is sometimes the only way to fully enjoy an ambient piece.

Re: Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

#38

Sign up with google not working for me, then tried sign up with email but said I already have an account.

Can't seem to find why. Do you mind DMing me your email so I can take a look at the account that was made? You can email contact@flowful.app.

Re: Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

#39
I got an error while trying this on Firefox (Librewolf):

Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).

Checking the console doesn't produce anything helpful either.

Edit: While inspecting the page, I found that there are a total of 28 different inline CSS styles. Some of them are empty, and some contains styles for class with random names. I assume this is just something with React and Chakra UI, though.

Re: Show HN: I made some ambient music generators that run in your browser

#40
post #18

I really dislike that after clicking `Start Listening Free` there is no way to get back to the home page. https://www.flowful.app/ redirects to https://www.flowful.app/player after that.

I figured people wouldn't want to keep navigating the landing page after they had already seen it once. This way you can just head straight back into the app. An incognito tab will let you see it again though.

I prefer to see how "deep" a product will let me go (without hitting a regwall) before reading about it. After I've tested out the gatekeeping, I go back to the homepage to learn more about the product.

But my personal use case aside -- if people want to see the homepage again for any reason, like contacting you, or linking to a friend -- you are blocking that ability.

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