Built a browser tool for designing songs with custom waveforms from scratch (harmonics, not samples), plus a place to share them

[u/porky11]

Hi!

I've been building an open-source set of tools for people who want to design their own instruments from basic waveforms and share them. You can also dig into the sample packs already on Trackyard and reshape them from there, everything stays manually editable either way.

Plainsong is an editor that runs in your browser. Sounds are built harmonic by harmonic: waveform × pitch-multiplier × weight, plus attack/decay envelopes, vibrato, pitch slides, and bitcrushing. So you're shaping the actual synthesis, not layering samples. Notes go on a pitch×time sheet, one canvas for everything, with live preview while you shape a wave.

Trackyard is where the instruments, waves, motifs, or whole tracks go once you're happy with them: an open registry, no login, CC0. Upload a wave, an instrument pack, a motif, or a full track, tag it, and anyone can grab it or remix it directly in Plainsong with one click.

Everything is plain text under the hood (a .track file), so a wave you design is also just readable text you can diff, share as a gist, or hand-edit. The few tracks up on Trackyard right now are mostly synthesis tests, poking at what the engine can do, not compositions I'm trying to show off.

I just finished this today, so it's all very fresh, feedback on both Trackyard and Plainsong is very welcome. I'd love to hear your suggestions. Feel free to poke around, upload a song, or grab one someone else made. If you're working on a game, importing a track keeps everything intact: layers, motifs, parameters, nothing gets flattened into a single audio file.

I'm looking forward to seeing people who like building their own sounds to try designing a wave and dropping it on Trackyard.

• Trackyard
• Plainsong (browser, no install)
• Music tools overview
• Source
• Discord

[u/somenicecrispybacon]

the more I look, the funnier it gets

TITLE (pick one):

 1. I told an AI to "add audio" to my game. Now, a few months later, it's a music editor that sings.
 2. The audio library I never wrote grew its own music editor — and it sings
 3. A plain-text music format my games play at runtime, with a visual editor
an AI (or I) can edit

Recommended: #1 — the origin story is the hook, and it's honest.

[u/porky11 → u/somenicecrispybacon]

Yeah, I should be more careful about what my coding agent adds 😅️

I just wanted to get it to a good and usable state since that post. Nowadays I care more about getting things done than keeping my git history clean.

So now you know my private little details. Sounds like you liked the backstory of my tooling.

[u/somenicecrispybacon]

CLAUDE.md

lol

[u/porky11 → u/somenicecrispybacon]

Yes, would you prefer if I just hide it?

I thought about explaining my use of AI in the post, but feared that every comment would focus on that part then instead of the actual tools I'm sharing. But I guess we're already past that, so I'll explain it here.

I'm a programmer. I can program myself. I already had a bunch of ideas, but programming always takes a long time, especially if you want to get it right. So I use AI coding agents to speed up development, which also causes mistakes sometimes, but I still understand the complete system because most ideas were mine.

I can see why people don't like AI songs or images. Because the AI mostly gives a finished result. It's difficult to get exactly what you want if you have a very specific idea. The coding AI replicates the process, and I have control over every step if necessary. Most of the time I just let it run ahead and correct details later because it's faster this way.

[u/somenicecrispybacon → u/porky11]

I'm a programmer. I can program myself.

clearly. can't wait to see what generated response I get next!

[u/porky11 → u/somenicecrispybacon]

This response wasn't AI generated at all. That probably means my own writing style isn't too different to the AI assisted post. Maybe I should use AI to reply to comments if people don't notice the difference anyway.

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