🎽 More features and cleaner panels

MIDI Keys web-app are working good, Chroma Touch app is built structurally, but need refinement. Aubio is now loaded from the NPM package - less clutter in the /use/ folder. The lib build is modular and easy to analyse.

🛝 Tone 15, more scale names and cleaner lib

We've added a whole lot more scale names found online. All the new names extend the Tonal.js ScaleType list and are instantly usable in many places on the web-site. First of all - the Chroma Profile app.

Tone was updated to version 15. We've changed deprecated Draw and Transport to getDraw() and getTransport() calls. Hope the performance and stability of audio synthesis will improve with that.

Cleaner apps

We are going to the situation where each Practice app will be very useful in daily practice and thus be full-screen and borderless.

New navigation bar

Navigation upgraded. More advanced navigation panel for better content browsing.

✅ Sidebar is always hidden - leaving space for content and apps

MIDI keys are introduced to synths. Soundfont synth is up and running. Willing to work on new features soon!

👀 Minimalist UI and refined navigation

Fresh revision of Chromatone interface. Less scroll distance for the same features.

• Got rid of Navbar menu
• Sidebar becomes the main way of navigation.
• Practice apps now have minimal heading for less scroll
• Padding and margins revised
• Parents and siblings now bear covers
• Completely removed Typescript from the project
• and more....

Stay tuned!

🛰️ Academy projects, events, links and more moving to Directus database

Directus 10 is a majestic tool to create very robust and interactive databases. With low-code Flow actions. Self-hosted, free and fully featured. I've been with them for long time, since the previous v.8, now deprecated PHP version. At first it was strange to see the whole product pivot to JS. I didn't have a Node.js server by that time and couldn't run new Directus on my shared hosting.

But now I gave it a try on a new small VPS server and with Coolify I got it all running very smoothly! Directus really shines there. It's a perfect DB UI builder, database manager and flows server. I mean you can create almost any flow of data, in and out, with incredibly powerful Flows. Clean and visible database space makes you connect to the data and it's structure. And create amazing things with the power of backend. It's like a backend frontend in that sense. ✨

So I'm moving data there. It's not as open source, as before, you won't see all the pieces of data right here in the repo. But it's much easier to work with, especially with others! For all these years of development I couldn't find anyone to get into code and content editing within the repo. Actually I've managed to guide a non-tech person through all the pull request procedure only once. And they don't want to do that any more 😅 And with Directus I've got first edits to the data within first weeks.

Now I can manage the data in clean and quite safe ways. And let others collaborate on it in a precise and safe way too. We have simple buttons to trigger complex tasks and build real content management system for all the knowledge and news, that gets generated here at Chromatone. By now I'm still the only developer in the project, but once the UI becomes "transparent" for people from both sides the creators and users will start using it as a product without thinking about code. But still creating and using very useful and enjoyable visual music experiences.

First experiment in moving data to the database is the Academy section. It's hosting almost 50 events, 10 projects and around a 100 of links for all the external links collection on the web-site. These were long YAML files and endless folders with very brief index.md and a cover .jpg file. Now they have a very intuitive editing interface and publishing flows. Years after developing the UI I found a way to get people interact in new ways with all the content. Events lead people to new experience, projects show future partners ways they can engage in collaboration with Chromatone too. It's a nice story, that's unfolding, and it should have more voices and roles in it.

The interactivity of Directus is yet to be really discovered as it has all the potential to make Chromatone a really live space. With people coming there every day to learn, practice, teach, perform or record music together. Polls, collaborative apps, ratings, authors, tutors and other creative input. All in robust and safe flows of Directus 10. It's not an easy thing to do. It all takes time and effort, but the joy of browsing and sharing your data in worth
it. ✊

So see you in the new chapter of Chromatone web-site and the whole project in itself. Chromatone Academy is not just a developer side-project, it's my real investment into real visual music future, where millions of people all around the world use color to study and practice music together. Share the vibes, build connections, feel the joy! Visual music will heal the world. 🙏

💡 v.2.0.8 More discreet design

The colors are indicators, but not space fillers. You can stay in light or dark mode and enjoy the background with only meaningful colors on screen.

Vite got updated to v.4.3.1 and it's FAST! Around 30% faster builds is a pleasure!

🏄🏾‍♂️ v2.0.5 Synced tabs, AMY synth, melodic minor

New feature:

• better browsing UX(18bbfeb) (by davay)
• active midi notes velocity(07a98ea) (by davay)
• new color mixer for research(0e27f90) (by davay)
• overview of Melodic minor modes (jazz scale)(a14e006) (by davay)
• start/stop sync across tabs!(9c7d5af) (by davay)
• midi sync(86fd480) (by davay)
• amy controls start(bb1d808) (by davay)
• successful AMY synth experiment(a7aa0d5) (by davay)

Bugs fixed:

• correct sidebar width(e0c1bd6) (by davay)
• 44100 is correct(d50a733) (by davay)
• heap bug fixed(01017c7) (by davay)

🚀 Chromatone v.2.0 launched!

Today we celebrate the new version of the Chromatone.center project! ✨

More than 1000 commits, 32 releases, 6 layers of code for almost 2 years of continuous coding got us to admit: a huge work is done and we are somewhere already! We've had a successful major refactoring of the code structure just recently. Now it's much more easily navigable and easy to collaborate on. So now it's time to shift gears towards more adoption of such an evolved ecosystem. Here's what is live here and now:

• Enormous interactive music education and research portal chromatone.center for everyone to explore
• Desktop app to have all that goodness offline (still in alpha, to test find your platform in the assets section down below)
• Print shop that delivers high quality stickers for various music instruments worldwide to have it out of the screen
• Open source GitHub repository with structured and partially documented Vite + Vue 3 + TS app code that consists of:
  • Digital garden of Markdowncontent on music theory and practice
  • Set of reusable musical Vue components
  • db folder full of valuable music datasets
  • Complete Vitepress theme to render all that content
  • use use-chtomatone npm-package for everyone to build music web-apps upon

And it's all packed with neat features, that sum up to a major platform for learning, teaching and practicing music with color and code. It's all made as a public domain infrastructure to build new communities of visual music learners and explorers around the world. Anyone can use Chromatone for any music project. So let's collaborate!

Chromatone is not at all a finished product. It's an ever growing tree of text and code and it needs much love and attention to grow. Contributing to the open source is a ✨. And you can start doing it today!

• Press that ⭐️ button at the top right
• Contribute your knowledge to the music theory content
• Commit and PR Vue 3 + TS code to improve components and composables
• Express appreciation for all the development by becoming a GitHub sponsor to the project or it's author and developer @davay42
• Also mind supporting any of more than 50 open-source packages authors who made all of this possible

We're here to develop!

Stay tuned!