UPDATE: This blog post is for an old version of Bosca Ceoil, and is out of date!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
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 Mac (v1.1)]
(for Linux, more info here)
[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)
Adobe Air does not appear to be supported for Linux…
This is awesome! Thank you!
Adobe Air is supported by Linux…in the ancient past. Drat you Adobe! Drat you to Heck!
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.
I love this to bits.
This is great! Super easy to use.
I did have a little trouble getting an exported WAV file to loop.
But overall, lovely music tool.
After about an hour, I had this: https://micahjones.info/mp3s/Strays/cephalopodiatrist.mp3
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.
Reminds me of LSDJ. Handy for LD ๐
This is Radical.
Very cool, thank you for rele
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 ๐
I cant read notes, I don’t know much about music but it’s so much fun ๐
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1496423/damdam.mp3
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.
Mike: You can press left and right on the arrangement view, and make songs as long as you like!
Oh I can’t believe I missed that! That’s so fantastic. Thank you. It’s like Pixen for music, I can’t get enough of it.
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
As someone who’s obsessed with loops, I’m liking this a lot ! Thanks Terry !
Let’s start a Bosca Ceoil compilation ! ๐
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 ๐
Not unless somebody else writes one, sorry! It’s open source, so you never know ๐
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.
Click on the keyboard on the left
This is so helpful and fun. I’ll use it so much.
Since it’s built with Air, any chance of seeing it on the android?
I installed Adobe Air 2.6 on Linux, eager to try this, but it won’t work ๐
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. ๐ I’ll need it – I’m such a bad programmer I need the man pages for logo.
clapa clapa claps
is good
cant wait until you fix it for longer than six measu- OH CRAP I CAN USE THE ARROWS
for a second i thought it was lazy
Wonderful, but if it’s possible would be nice to be able to use the drums along with the melodies.
Ok, found the way to do so. Anyway, the 1.1 is a nice update.
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.
This is so simple, yet so awesome and beautiful.
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
Ohh, that sucks ๐ The 128 pattern limit is kinda arbitrary – I’ll see about increasing it for the next version.
Can I donate via Paypal for this sequencer so you can update it more? I love it.
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!
Great tracker, I wish there was a multi-effect support for each instrument.
Anyway, liked it for simplicity.
I love this. I made this with it today. It’s such a fun program, I hope a community forms around it. https://themanchild.bandcamp.com/track/runningman
Very cool! Thanks for sharing.
Awesome! thank you.
Am I missing a way to copy patterns? cmd dragging would be cool.
MIDI out would be phenomenal.
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.
thanks ๐
We can have only 128 patterns … ๐
fab!!!
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 ๐
Amazing software by the way! ๐
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 ๐
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)
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!
Having a great time with this Terry.
After years of wrapping my head around half a dozen overly complex DAWs when all I wanted to do was nut out a little chiptune ditty, it’s a breath of fresh air. Enjoying listening to everyone else’s creations too! Here’s a couple of mine:
https://soundcloud.com/donnie-cuzens/portent
https://soundcloud.com/donnie-cuzens/the-dungeon
This is cool, it’s the musical equivalent of Bfxr ๐
LOVE IT! IT’S GREAT!
Just found this tool and have been using it compulsively in the last few days. It’s great, thanks! ๐
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