Tulip, a musical computer based on Micropython
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- Tulip, built in the spirit of 80s home computers, is running Micropython as its operating system. Conceived with a clear focus on music, it comes with an internal sequencer and software synthesizer (-framework), MIDI and audio interfaces. You can build it yourself, download a version for Linux, Windows or Mac, or buy the official hardware, which is shown here.
In this video, I show how to utilize Python to solve some day-to-day tasks like arpeggiators and keyboard splits and MIDI routing.
Tulip homepage:
github.com/sho...
Buy tulip: www.makerfabs....
BOM: github.com/sho...
KiCAD files: github.com/sho...
Evil influencer stuff:
That LED monitor amzn.to/4cPDVgi
Me, on Apple Music / not-my-hyena
Build commands for Tulip Desktop on Windows and Linux:
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev libffi-dev make libsdl2-dev gcc alsa-utils
git clone github.com/sho...
cd tulipcc/tulip/linux/
./build.sh
HÄLP ZIS CHANNEL
/ floyd_steinberg
floydsteinberg...
floydsteinberg...
/ @mr_floydst
Join us on Woody Piano Shack's Discord server: / discord
Get 7% off on DistroKid with this link distrokid.com/v...
PayPal.me www.paypal.me/...
Shop a Huge Selection of Synths and Drum Machines at PerfectCircuit.com!
link.perfectci...
Here's what I have in my setup at the moment. Want to have that, too? Please use the followings links and support me:
Yamaha EX5 www.ebay.com/s...
Kasser Synths Arcade www.tindie.com...
Intech GRID: intech.studio/
MPC One, Novation PEAK, Reface DX, Source Audio Collider, Strymon Iridium, Zoom MS 70 CDR, Donner N-25, Akai EWI USB, Zoom R20, Zoom H5, Yamaha MT7, Roland Aira:
www.thomann.de...
Some bands / artists I've been following for a long time are (among others) Massive Attack, Pink Floyd, Pet Shop Boys, Archive, A-Ha, Yes, Porcupine Tree, John Mellencamp, Jean-Michel Jarre, Metallica, Peter Gabriel and Perturbator. So my music will kind of sound like those (without ever reaching the greatness of those artists, of course). :-)
Only a minute in and huge respect to the dev for making this so freely available to use. Extremely based. That bit at 7:00 sounds like some original Command & Conquer soundtrack music! awesome video and project
There's nothing more I could add. This is one of those rare "wow everything here is very well thought through" projects.
This is amazing. Props to Brian for creating this
Thanks for watching! Couldn't agree more. :-)
EXACTLY. And crap on anti-non-chinese makerfabs for trying to profit on Brian's work.
@@neoultra6528 I'm trying to understand your comment but not having much luck. Would you please explain? Is there some problem with makerfabs?
That blue is reminiscent of the Atari 8 bit computers. I'm sure it is not a coincidence. Sounds like a fun device to play with!
Yes! I think you're right! Didn't notice that. :-)
you are correct :) I grew up on the 800XL and "Tulip Teal" is the closest color to its NTSC blue you can get in RGB332 (00001001)
@@brian-whitman Glad to see it! We will try writing a sound program.
I appreciate you showcasing these independent developer's creations. Those ESP boards have opened up a lot of possibilities to democratize hardware creation. I wonder how difficult it would be to add some analog circuitry to these projects, like a filter 🤔 having owned a qun mk2 there's something about the sound of these devices that reminds me of casio's higher end synths. I think it's something to do with the way they produce sound in the high mids that gives them quite a digital sound
Adding an analog filter to a polyphonic digital synth is quite the undertaking - there has to be an instance of a filter (plus envelope circuit) for every voice, unless you can live with a global filter (but let's be real here, that would be a not-so-great solution)
I thought the emulations on this project sound quite close to the real thing. The square sound you're hearing in the beginning and end are my own creations on the EX5 and they're meant to be bright and cheerful. :-)
@@mr_floydst I was very impressed by the emulations. Nothing a little EQing and effects couldn't cover up to sit comfortably in a mix. I have a mini freak and its' filter is paraphonic and it really does do wonders for its sound and I'm not too fussed thst it's global. Of course I've never built anything electronic, though i did imagine it would be hard without custom made parts beyond the reach of these builders
@@dyscotopiathe problem isn't any "custom parts" it's as Floyd said, all the voices and generated and mixed within the microcontroller before the master mix goes out to the DAC so there's no way to pass the individual or groups of voices through any external analog circuitry.
Maybe my hearing isn't that great, but I have a hard time telling between a well implemented digital filter and analog one.
*Pondered making some, but the emulations of some filters are really great now. Maybe not in that synth yet. Haven't listened on proper cans or studio monitors. If want something awesome, get 2 Avalons and send one to Me😁*
Can't wait to try this :)
Thanks for watching! It'll be worth it. :)
Thanks Floyd for your effort in sharing and educating us. I will order that Tulip computer, it’s very good, I like it. Have a great day and GOD Bless !!! ❤
Thanks for your kind words!
Thanks for showing this device.
@@lummsmusik3219 thanks for watching!
I love such tinkering... 🤩
Thanks for watching!
Thank you for this, Floyd, got hooked up and playing with a cheap used Akai MPK88 - Along with Reaper on my Pi 5. Now to get MiniDexed set up and working along with my Squishbox.
It's a very cost efficient experimental setup that can put out some great retro/80s sounds. And Tulip can perform all kinds of MIDI magic ;-)
Always an inspiration, thanks Floyd.
Thanks for watching!
I bought one today based on this review.
Congrats! There've been numerous updates since I made this video already, make sure to join the project's Discord server to learn more.
love this video! you made a great track on tulip!
Thanks for coming up with this! :-) (Here are the links, once more:
www.makerfabs.com/the-tulip-creative-computer.html - buy a ready-made tulip
github.com/shorepine/tulipcc - tulip github page )
*Thanks for making that project open source! Ditch the anti-non-chinese makerfabs company scumbags though!!! Sadly that company's main business model seems to be reselling lower cost products from taobao and similar at higher prices and exploiting Western software and hardware engineers to profit on selling overpriced products to other Western males.*
this is really cool i wish it was built into a keyboard though like the orangepi with a little flip up display
Thanks for watching! It's open source and all the CAD files are available for download as well. So you _could_ do it. :-)
This looks like an excellent device .. I'm not understanding how deep programming can actually go eg. Is the Juno emulation also programmed in micropython and is there a level where programming blocks are actually in machine code (eg. Like a filter is a basic programming block in puredata, and i don't think you can program a filter function using other non-filter blocks).
Finally ... If the originator of the project is reading .. can we have a node.js version for those who don't like Python syntax! :)
It is an excellent device. As far as I read it, AMY is developed in C, see github.com/shorepine/amy
There are some example files written in python.
OMG The Steinberg Peel...
I'm sorry not sorry for that, haha. ;-)
Legend, thanks
Thanks for watching!
awesome!
Thanks!
cmin is my fav chord
Same here, at least for UA-cam video jams. I've gotten so used to it. ;-)
Does it have ability to play samples, for example from USB stick? I'm thinking a kind of DIY SP404 might be possible.
Yes, there's a sample player built in. See github.com/shorepine/tulipcc/blob/main/docs/music.md#sampler-pitchedpcmsynth
What is the mini midi keyboard you are using ?
It's a Donner N-25, which sadly seems to be discontinued.
Nice Video and Demonstration of the Controller. Have you heard about the mp midi controller and have you tested it?
I got a demo on Superbooth 23 and made a short video within my SB report of that year. But I didn't try it "at home". Yet. ;-) Video is here ua-cam.com/video/8_Ka3l3gnmE/v-deo.htmlsi=QdDPuIDLPvwfxiJE&t=729 (timestamp included)
@@mr_floydst thank you for the information. Have you planned a more detailed inspection of it in the future?
I won't buy one just to show it on this channel, and I guess they won't send me one for review, so I guess that won't happen - my apologies ;-)
Hey Floyd(song reference for you :P), Could you look into the PiSound by Blokas?
If someone at Blokas is reading this and interested in me talking about the PiSound and willing to send me a test unit (that I'm willing to return after review) - sure! But as my cupboards are filled with DIY stuff, I don't want to add another PI audio interface to my collection with my own money.
@blokas, may we have your attention please
@@mr_floydst I tried it with a basic usb soundcard, not the best way to try it but it works
Isn't python a little constricting?
(Sorry, snake joke.)
Nice one!😂👍🏻
Boah, aye! :-)
I C what you did there...
I guess I could use Faders and or a DrumPad instead via USB-C?
Yes, that's correct.
Or a 16n faderbank through i2c I would imagine
Does this have any non-musical application? I'm looking for a screen I can hook a computer up to to have a distraction free writing environment. Need to be able to type, save files (or email them)? Thanks!
It has python and a text editor built in. I'm not shure this is what you're looking for.
is the AMY synth actually doing synthesis to make those juno/dx7 style sounds, or is it more like a rompler?
No, this is a VA synth. Impressive stuff, as everything has its own API call. See github.com/shorepine/amy
Hi Floyd -does this have internal battery ?would be great if didn’t need to be plugged into usb all the time
@@richardcnrd8302 You can add a battery, as I said right in the beginning of the video. Please visit the project's homepage to see which one.
Hi! Im very exited about linux-based music 'hardware'! But what about lattency? What auduo buffer size is on such ARM Linux devices? Is there any lattency added by OS? What about lattency of touchscreen, btw? But most imortant the overall time: from trigger midi note till sound output. I feel this aspect vitally important, but most youtube guys just don't say much...
Well this hardware is *NOT* running Linux for a start. And because it isn't running a general purpose multitasking OS, the latency from the FreeRTOS on the ESP32 is negligible. You could run it bare metal on a rp2040 and then not even have the RTOS at all.
@mksln oh wow, i totally missed that is a RTOS device. Thank you for clarifying! I thought that Linux was the only choice because in music performance we all want to have good and fast DACs, while the mass-marker is basically full of good USB audio interfaces that a (more or less) compatible with linux stack (ALSA, Jack, PipeWire). And i'm very curious: is well builded ARM Linux device comparable with true RTOS 'hardware' in terms of latency? Like, can i build ARM Linux fingerdrumming machine with same low latency as real devices like MPC may have?
@@barkalov No worries at all. The RP2040 is actually experiencing quite a boom in its use for open source music making devices. I personally work on the picoTracker, but I know also of the zeptocore and wee noise maker pgb-1, all of which run "baremetal" (*no* rtos) on the RP2040 while closed source products such as the woovebox runs on the ESP32 while the m8 runs on a teensy stm32. All of those (bar the esp32) are ARM cortex-m based microcontrollers so *none* are Linux devices. Speaking for the only the picoTracker which Im familiar with firmware wise, I can tell you the latency is very low and the audio buffers are quite small, though because we have very consistent timing with basically no preemption outside event handlers for IO interrupts. You might also note that the MPC Live runs on a Linux kernel, so really the distinction you should be making is use of general purpose "desktop" OS's like Linux or MacOS for that matter vs micro-controller based devices.
As Maks said. Latency is "practically non existent" here.
You'll run into some timing problems when booting Python apps with a detailed GUI (you can see this in the video). But as I said in the end, this already was improved vastly during filming the video.
@@barkalovregarding Linux latency, I am aware of the Muse Receptor(a rack mountable VST host) as an example of a product sold for gigging which is actually using Linux(x64) under the hood. Devices aiming to use Linux for real-time will spend considerable effort on a custom tuned kernel that minimizes latency and turns off unnecessary services; they don't just use the stock one because the stock kernel is aiming to serve "average cases" where there are hundreds of processes and dozens of hardware peripherals that all compete for system time and bandwidth.
Microcontroller-based devices like the ESP32 design the Tulip is using don't require a generic OS layer, since they are designed around taking direct control over all the pins on the board - you can use them to generate stable audio and video signals, as in the ESP32 "Fab-GL" project. And they are really cheap too. Turns out less is more, when we are asking about hardware latency 😂
Any idea if any Mutable Instruments code has been ported over? I think lot of it is already python-based...
It's still early days. You have an interesting idea here, but I wonder what MI would think about that ;-)
@mr_floydst not sure - but I know that they released much of their source code for their synthesizer modules under Creative Commons license on github before they went out of business..
Will my crappy windows 10 tablet finally get a use case……….!?
Who knows? ;-)
@@mr_floydst a true empiricist, may you be my neighbor on this planet forever amen
the desktop app is not for win users...
You're right - not yet, it's in the works. The Linux version will work in Windows 11 when you turn on WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), though. You can find that in the control panel, it's quite easy to install.
@@mr_floydst Thank you! i have a question about the midi plugs on the esp board. wich type of cable do i need? type a, b or c?
It's a type A cable.
Nice sound, but this is very definitely not how I like to play music
Thanks! I can totally see why you feel that way. This is for people who enjoy algorithmic music or people who are looking for a platform to develop ideas on - all the building blocks are there for creating any idea related to electronic music.
Too much noise on the back.
Not enough words in comment ;-)
(Please elaborate: do you dislike the traffic noise on my voiceover, the noise the computer emits when using USB power, or the "noise" in the background of the screen? or all of that?) I can't do a lot to fix the first issue :-)
@@mr_floydst sorry. I meant that the audio recording seems to capture the noise of the usb or something. Or maybe it was taken with a high gain. I would like to know if it’s possible to get a clear sound of this little but interesting device. Thanks.
I've noticed on my Tulip that it's sensitive to noise on the USB charger if connected. When I record audio I either use a ground loop isolator ($10) or just unplug the charger and run on battery. the DAC (a PCM5101) is pretty high quality and sounds pretty great IMO
The noise you're hearing there is created by the USB computer keyboard with its LED lights. Once those were switched on, they created feedback noise. I only realized this after nearly finishing the video and turned them off.
USB and audio is a finicky combination. As Brian said, best have a dedicated USB power supply and do not ever connect anything with another main PSU to your circuit.
If you follow these recommendations, this system here is really low-noise.
@@mr_floydst thank you for your explanations. I will take it a closer look. Thank you too for your interesting content