BBL_VIZZY

BBL_VIZZY is a bytebeat synthesizer and visualizer for the web built by myself, Paul Batchelor, and Seamus Edson at the Recurse Center in the summer of 2024.

Bytebeat synthesis effectively draws waveforms using crude, bit-constrained arithmetic. It fills a PCM buffer with the result of invoking a program once per sample. The program produces output samples by performing bitwise and arithmetic operations (and not, say, sin()) using only the sample counter as input. This leads to quantized and aliased artifacts that can be seen with the visualizer.

Listen to a few programs:

• t * (t>>4) & (t>>2) | (t / 5)
• ((t * (t >> 8)) & 255) << 3
• t*(((t>>12)|(t>>8))&(63&(t>>4)))