drum-circles

Started as a class exercise — a Tone.js groovebox with six synth engines, a step sequencer each, a global scale, a mixer, master FX. I wanted to push it toward something you'd actually want to noodle in with other people: a musical chat room.

Replaced the step sequencers with dual Euclidean sequencers per channel, combined by a logic operator you pick from a dropdown — AND, OR, XOR. That breaks past the recognizable 'Euclidean flavor' that gets stale, giving each channel a lot more rhythmic room.

Euclidean algorithms are great at rhythm but say nothing about pitch. So each pulse walks through an 8×8 note grid — eight octaves visible at once — that's locked to the global scale and updates when you change it. You literally cannot pick an off-key note. No theory required, but deep enough for advanced players.

The honest part: I could not get WebSockets working, so the real-time multiplayer — the whole 'circle' — never landed for the deadline. It runs great as a single-player instrument; the shared rooms are still on the list.

Kept iterating after the deadline. The logic operator gave way to a sequential mode — the two patterns chain end to end, so a channel can run a 16-step phrase into a 12-step answer — and each pattern gained a distribution knob that smears its pulses toward the front or back of the bar. That distribution control is the one that later got ported into mutax's firmware.

Shipped the newer engine to the live site and rebuilt the interface in the rheome design language — the same terminal-lit panels as this site, with the sequencer LEDs borrowing kaolin's display colors.