UPDATE: This blog post is for an old version of Bosca Ceoil, and is out of date! Bosca Ceoil v2.0 is available from here: boscaceoil.net

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I made a thing! It’s a simple music creation tool, called Bosca Ceoil (pronouced “bus-ka kyo-al”, Irish for “Music Box/Accordion”).

I made this because I find other music programs really confusing and distracting. Too many panels, buttons and knobs! I wanted something really simple, something designed to work the way I tend to create stuff – a process that I suppose I could best describe as: make something super simple, and keep tweaking it until it starts to get good.

Bosca Ceoil is all about looping, and designed that way at its heart. Songs are built up from lots of tiny 16 note patterns – the intended workflow is that you loop over these single patterns until you have something you like, then you start making variations. If you approach it this way, you’ll find it’s pretty decent at doing that – but it’s not very good at other things, like say, long melody lines. It is what it is! I made it for myself, and the way I work, but hopefully some of you out there will find it useful too. It’s free, and open source under the FreeBSD licence. If anyone wants to port it/fork it, go for it! It’s on github here.

[Download for Windows (v1.1)]
[Download for Mac (v1.1)]
(for Linux, more info here)

[Download AIR Installer (v1.1)]
[download adobe air]

It’s a pretty simple program, and only takes about five minutes to learn how to use. Here’s a tutorial to get you started!

(if Bosca Ceoil is too much of a mouthful, feel free to just call it Bosca)

70 thoughts on “Bosca Ceoil”
  1. I’m not sure, but it might be possible to recompile it with AIR 2.6, or whatever the last Linux AIR version was. Depends on whether the SiON library (which this uses) will work on an older version too, though.

  2. Yay! I saw you tweet about this a while ago, wondering what you might come up with. I’ll give it a try once I’m on a *real* computer (actually, that may be a while).
    _On a different note_, I predict that Adobe should stop hating every other group, or they’ll get bought out by Oracle.

  3. Ahem. One more time, this time with the correct bits at the end of the sentence:

    Thank you for releasing it, like all good music-making tool it has its own personality.

    Stupid tab key ๐Ÿ˜€

  4. I really love this! Do you basically use six 16-note bits as a whole song and have it loop continuously, or when you use it do you normally stitch those bits together into larger songs?

    I know nothing about music but this is simple enough to actually play around with and make things come out. The extra scales are really great touches.

  5. I like it! Very fun to use! However, it bugs me that every time I switch to a different pattern the view jumps to the same octave position every time. I wish I could switch between patterns and stay at the same pitch level so I could quickly inspect the melody lines going across the edges of patterns. I hope that makes sense.

    I made something quick: https://soundcloud.com/erenan/two

  6. Hey Terry, GREAT tool – any chance for a MML exporter or other kind of SiON export option? I would love to use it for Flash projects, but I HATE writing MML ๐Ÿ™‚

  7. Is there a function to make a note play when you click on it to place/move it? I’ve never really learned how to read musical notes, and while I do like creating music as a hobby, I always do it by ear. Most other music creation tools have this.

  8. Thundr, I asked Terry this very question and he told me it will be difficult to port to Android because of the controls. The PC version uses keyboard, cursor, mouse wheel, and 3 mouse buttons.

    Then he wished me good luck with his open source. ๐Ÿ˜€ I’ll need it – I’m such a bad programmer I need the man pages for logo.

  9. Well, could you get this guy who helped porting VVVVVV to C to port it over? There are some decent C synth libraries too so it shouldn’t be bit of a hassle.

  10. Thanks for making this, it’s amazing!

    And I found a bug: When you have used up all 128 patterns and try to delete one, it messes up the patterns in the arrangement. The numbers stay the same but the patterns change.

    This is my humble 3 minute song (yes I wasted all 128 patterns)
    https://soundcloud.com/czafa/bosca

  11. I would donate to show my appreciation as well. I demand Paypal or another option, else I will be forced to buy VVVVVV over and over for complete strangers!

  12. I don’t care how many times I spam this comment box. I’m madly in love with this little app and I use it every single week. Terry, you roxorz my soxorz.

    And jonah, you can copy patterns by dragging them to a new space in the arrangement, or you can middle click a pattern on the arrangement to create a new pattern with the previous pattern’s music.

  13. Hi, is there any way to add an effect (delay, chorus, etc.) just to ONE instrument? When I click on ADVANCED and add an effect it applies to all instruments in the ARRANGEMENT tab ๐Ÿ™

    Amazing software by the way! ๐Ÿ˜€

  14. Carlos: Sadly not! I’d really like to do that, but I’m limited by the SiON library, which I don’t think can do instrument specific effects. At the very least, I haven’t been able to figure it out, and nobody else has been able to explain it to me ๐Ÿ™

  15. Bosca Ceoil is a fantastic program. I use it for sketching out songs a lot! Whenever I reopen songs I’ve worked on, the song plays at a much slower tempo than they are set at until I move the tempo around and then back. Also, there have been times when the instruments I’ve set are set to different instruments when I load the file again… Beyond those bugs, Bosca is now one of my main composition apps. Thanks! (Here’s an example of something I’ve made with Bosca — https://soundcloud.com/blkmkt/magma-hammer-v-bc-wip)

  16. I just got into making music as a hobby and this program is amazing! Perfect to cut your teeth and get creating quickly. Thank you so much!

  17. Just found this tool and have been using it compulsively in the last few days. It’s great, thanks! ๐Ÿ™‚

    I have to say I’ve been doing exactly what it’s not intended for, ie long melody lines, and though it required patience, I just really liked the simplicity of it.
    Turned out not too bad I think:

    https://soundcloud.com/daoyster-1/cruisin

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