By Terry
I’ve very happy to announce a brand new version of my beginner’s music making tool Bosca Ceoil! This is version 2.0, the first major update since it was released in 2013. This new version of the tool is a significant update, and adds lots of features and improvements. Head to boscaceoil.net to download it!
If you’re totally new to Bosca Ceoil, the new site should tell you everything you need to know about what it is and what it can do. If you’ve used it before, here’s what’s changed:
A major problem that Bosca always had is that it was kind of a dead end: if you made a song with it, you could save it as a .ceol, or export it as a .wav – but that was that.
So one of the most important things that’s new is support for exporting as a midi file! Midi files are supported by lots of popular music applications, so this means that it’s now possible to, for example, use Bosca to compose the actual notes, and then later import the song into something like FLStudio so you can add VST instruments.
Also, in addition to midis, Bosca can now also export .XM files and .MML files, thanks to contributions by Rob Hunter!
I made Bosca Ceoil the same way I make games – with a fixed resolution, running at 60FPS. Which is great for games, but not so good for an app that you might want to leave running in the background while you work on other stuff, say.
The new version of Bosca has a proper resizeable window, so you can see a lot more of the song you’re composing. It’s something it should have had all along, and it makes it infinitely nicer to work with!
It’s also gotten some major performance boosts with caching and CPU throttling, and is generally just much happier about running in the background than it used to be.
Bosca’s GUI has had a makeover. Things are generally brighter, clearer and more responsive!
Thanks for Chris Kim, you can now use Bosca right in your web browser, without downloading anything! Try it here!
At long last, Bosca has a built in tutorial, with nice, clear little pop up windows! This is something I’m really happy about – Bosca’s a beginner’s tool, and this does a lot to make it that bit more accessible.
Bosca Ceoil is a completely free, open source project, and I’m very grateful to the contributions others have made to it – especially Chris Kim for his flash web port, Rob Hunter for writing the .XM and .MML exporters, and Damien L, who forked Bosca back to Air 2.6 so that it could be used on Linux. Thank you so much for your help!
Hope you enjoy the new version!
This is rad, Terry. I love it.
Excellent. Thanks a lot for the update on what already was a great software.
Thank you so much Terry! This tool was already amazing and now I’m WAY TOO EXCITED about the resizable window 😀
The ability to limit the available notes to those within a given scale or chord is quite useful and the ease with which it’s possible to do so is excellent.
This is a fantastic program. I’ve been using it to compose music for the past 6 months since I’ve found it and I’m incredibly exited to be able to export what I’ve done to Midi and experiment on different platforms! This is seriously the perfect beginner’s tool to music tracking. I actually recently used Bosca Ceoil to teach the basics of music to a Boys and Girls Club group and it went over really well. I hope to continue using it as a teaching tool. Thanks so much for the added support for this powerful tool!
Such a great update! I even made a version of Pushing Onwards with midi guitars in Bosca Ceoil! All ready for upload!
Thanks for the update, can we get a demo from you to see what can be do with this software? 😀
(Ps : I love VVVVVV o/)
Your software is so good I wanna make babies to it
Hey terry, Buscaceoil es super cool, i follow you since a couple of years and i have used this program to create tiny compositions for some of my animated shorts
so… Thanks 🙂
i closed it and qhen i came back it keep opening a ‘boscaceoil.exe has stopped working’ message
i restarted my pc and even reinstaled bosca ceoil but it keeps showing the same message :,(
what do i do? (i use windows 7)
Bosca is awesome!
You don’t know how grateful I am to have access to this resource for free. This is everything I’ve ever wanted in a basic music making program, and it excludes everything in sound design that’s too complicated for me to understand! It’s absolutely perfect
Thank you so much Terry.
Adobe air isn’t supported on linux anymore, this means it is kinda hard to install it.I would’ve tried it if I could, please add linux support
Ack, that’s a shame.
I’m still interested in doing a full haxe/C port, but the software depends on the sion synth library, and it doesn’t look like anyone is actively working on it…
I’m confused as to why the online version of Bosca Ceoil isn’t working. There are certain devices that I own that can’t download and run the Bosca Ceoil offline, so I normally use the online version for these devices, since that actually works. If you know why this is could you please fix it.
Working on it!
I LOVE BOSCA CEOIL!!!!
I first found it from a video made by Brackeys, and I am so glad I did!! I knew the minute that I started using it that I would be able to create good music with it, mainly because the UI is simple, yet has a ton of tools and sounds!! I tried using other softwares, however they seemed to be too confusing and complicated for me. I created a good song within the first hour of having this, which is something I can’t say for ANY other software!!
*** The one thing I wish was a thing, was a way to insert an empty column in-between some arrangement columns, because when I wanted to add a spot near the beginning, I had to manually move everything over.
(If there is a way to do this already and I am being stupid, could you please by change let me know? Thank you ^_^)
This tool is very useful for beginners getting into sound design. I found this from a YouTuber called Brackeys and once I started using it, I was able to make a short 15 second loop in 10 minutes, with no skill in sound design.
Thanks!
Hey Terry! I think that the online version should have enabled flash button. I cloned it on GitHub and I uploaded it to Thimble (By Mozilla) and I made a enable flash button! The reason was that at school they had disabled flash on those kinds of websites so I had to make a version with a flash button! Thimble for some reason cannot run .swfs so I want to upload it to GitHub so I can publish it with github.io and use it at school. Because my domains are blocked by the filter! RIP. Btw I can’t email you because your cahctpa is down. Hope you can get it back up soon. Email with the website provided above!
Amazing program…. I love it and I’m all the time doing songs for games.
As a comment for those people who need to know: shift left clic insert a column.
ctrl left clic (or directly right clic) delete a column.
All of this in the bottom line where you select columns to play.
Thanks for developing this program.
Can you please update it? I would really like to be able to do glissandos and triplets. More chiptune synths would be welcome too.
I tried using other music making tools but this is my favorite even without glissandos or triplets.
This program is really well made! I am very happy I found this on itch.io. Question: do you have plans to add any keyboard shortcuts to the /- buttons or instrument picker?
That would be most welcome.
Thank you!
Dear Terry,
I was so excited to use bosca ceoil and I heard it was an exceptional DAW for pixel art games. Unfortunatley, my Macbook pro being a Macbook pro, did not allow me to open the application simply because boscaceoil needs to be updated to work with macOS Catalina. Please, have a 64-bit build for Bosca Ceoil. Please.
Hey Terry I hope you see this comment. I’m admiring your work! Bosca Ceoil is my favorite app for creating music! It is fun , easy , and you can create even real songs! I really hope that you will continue to make the app better, add features , and new stuff to make it even better. please don’t stop your amazing work! I’m waiting for the next update eagerly! and if Bosca Ceoil had a premium option which you could buy i would definitely buy it because I love it!
Thank you so much for creating Bosca have a nice day
Thanks soooo much. This makes everything so much easier, but, any new updates coming? This simplistically awesome program could use a couple of extra goodies. *wink wink*. Honestly though there is no other program like it, thanks a bunch for letting fellow game developers use it
Please Make Another Update For Bosca* I Beg Of You To Do So*
Love this tool! It’s so simple.
The only thing it ABSOLUTELY NEEDS is MIDI Out.
This way you could control VST instruments and sync its tempo to hardware.
Awesome! I Liked the app thanks!
PLEASE MAKE AN UPDATE FOR THIS IT’S BEEN LIKE 7 YEAR OR SO
IT’S AMAZING BUT IT REALLY NEEDS AN UPDATE
PLEASE MAKE AN UPDATE!!
I love this tool so much, but there’s one error I have gotten twice now where my .ceol files are not saving. Is it something to do with memory, where bigger files cannot be saved, or is this linked to something else?
Anyways, I love Bosca Ceoil so much, and respect your work!
I love this application, but PLEASE make an update with new features! I see loads of potential already with this app, but there is some more stuff I would like to see added.
Some ideas I have:
Dynamic BPM changes – Ritardandos and accelerandos would be so fun in Bosca Ceoil!!
Triplets and Glissandos
Use multiple advanced effects at once (reverb settings, chorus, etc)
Adjust swing wherever
Possibly add stereo sound options?