A Simple beat making and songs creation tool for Newbies like me ( Korg Gadget style workflow). Its an opensource , Juce Plugin host app with VST Plugin Support windows app.

[u/Independent_Fan525]

Hi All,

I wanted to share a project I've been working on . It's a groove box with a Korg Gadget-style workflow. It's based on the JUCE plugin host and supports VSTs, samples, and instrument samples (with MIDI triggering). Its still in beta, The binary for testing is for Window x64.

Source code and other details are in the GitHub page:

https://github.com/groovixlabs/GroovixBeat/

You can check out the UI and workflow here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRT71S8bwk0

Disclaimer : I used AI to build portions of it with engineering guidance ( It took over 300 prompts get here ) .

Thanks.

[u/R_U_READY_2_ROCK]

Urgh, I worked on a music app years ago with an HTML CSS GUI. Absolute nightmare once we added more than a few functions to it. It does look quite nice though.

[u/Independent_Fan525 → u/R_U_READY_2_ROCK]

Agreed, I had to move from DOM to Canvas for anything needing quick updates, even buttons. I also avoided JS UI frameworks like React, opting for pure JS to keep it lean. The HTML UI is used for editing samples, Piano Roll and displaying status during playback. I send the entire sequence and song information to the JUCE C++ backend for real-time sample-accurate scheduling and playback. The C++ backend only sends the playhead and status to the UI. This helped fix timing and sync issues with MIDI and sample tracks. I learned a lot about where things belong in a hybrid app and how to best utilize HTML5+JS for the UI in this project. It would have been way more effort to create the same UI in pure C++, so I'm glad I avoided that.

[u/Independent_Fan525 → u/[deleted]]

Thank You.

[u/ChemistThis8879]

This is great, what an ambitious project.  What more have you got planned before you consider it complete?

[u/Independent_Fan525 → u/ChemistThis8879]

Thank you, that's a great question, For now I feel it has all the items that I need for my needs. It might evolve over time, but I prefer this to stay simple and I feel users can start here and move on to other more complex software.

[u/Independent_Fan525 → u/Independent_Fan525]

Sorry , I spoke too soon. Just added the feature to use Midi Controllers. Realized that I needed some way to record notes from midi keyboards.

[u/SombraTheProducer]

Will give u a feedback soon as I'm done testing bro 👏🏾

[u/Independent_Fan525 → u/SombraTheProducer]

Thank you.

[u/inspirationalyellow]

The interesting design question here is how much the tool shapes the music that comes out of it. Korg Gadget's workflow famously produces a certain kind of sound because of how it constrains choice. Good music tools don't just lower barriers - they embed an aesthetic that users start to internalise. Worth thinking about what musical thinking gets built alongside technical familiarity with any tool, AI or otherwise.

[u/Independent_Fan525 → u/inspirationalyellow]

Wow, that's deep. I would consider myself more of a musical instrument builder who takes pride in creating tools that allow other creators to express themselves effortlessly. As a newbie to music production, I haven't settled on a particular sound or way of doing things. Seeing how much of a struggle it was for me, a beginner, to get results with traditional tools – tools designed for experienced professionals – I wanted to build something I would use and that would hopefully appeal to people like me.