Update Notes
Feature: Non-destructive exporting and importing of blocks, tracks, and workspaces. Select 'Object' from the drop-down menu when exporting things. This will export everything in the right-hand list to the output directory in blockhead's project format.
Exporting Notes:
The output files will be named .blkhd_block, .blkhd_track, or *.blkhd_ws. These are all basically the same format.
Update Notes
Feature: Track stem exporting.
Update: Improved audio exporting interface. You can bring up the export dialog in various ways:
Click the "Export..." button on the Project tab on the right-hand side.
Select one or more samples in the sample browser and click on the "Export..." button.
Select one or more blocks in the block browser and click on the "Export..." button.
Apologies if the rapid-fire updates are annoying. I am just trying to get a useable version of Blockhead on Patreon before I get started on some much bigger stuff.
Update Notes
Update: Linux - Blockhead should now show up in the JACK interface as "Blockhead" instead of "PortAudio".
Bugfix: Tempo Guide visual shading is broken.
Links
Manual (WIP): 2024-04-12 11:54:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Update Notes
Update: Brought back the old block/sample preview buttons (Mouse hover over the left-hand side of a block or sample list item. Left-click to trigger, right-click to stop all currently playing one-shots for that specific item.)
Update: Moved F1 cheat sheet to the center of the window.
Bugfix: F1 cheat sheet is all messed up.
Bugfix: Rare but possible glitch if user manually stops a ...
Update Notes
Update: Block and sample one-shots now respond to MIDI note-off events
Update: Block one-shots now respond to MIDI pitch. Please note:
All the MIDI stuff is still temporary and really only there to mess around with. It is not representative of the stuff I am planning in the future. I added this change because I had to refactor that part of the codebase anyway, and making the blocks respond to MIDI pitch was...
2024-04-10 18:38:47 +0000 UTC View PostIn addition to the stuff listed below I have tried to address some of the old issues related to starting/stopping the audio system. This issues include crashes when switching audio device settings (I think mostly on Linux) and settings not being correctly recalled on startup. Pretty much everything that Blockhead does to start and stop the audio system is now encapsulated in this library: https://github.com/colugomusic/bh...
2024-03-24 22:38:47 +0000 UTC View PostUpdate Notes
Bugfix: Slicing a squashed block is even more broken than before (whoops)
Bugfix: Positions of copied/cloned blocks are not calculated correctly when the selection is not on the first track.
Links
Manual (WIP): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y6je_g2oNnxClL1eXV20dcQpoyZEkek...
2024-03-13 19:51:08 +0000 UTC View PostUpdate Notes
Update: When squash mode is enabled, the block scaling will now always pivot about the left edge of the block, regardless of the current data offset.
Update: Settings dialog is a little bit neater and the content will no longer overflow.
Update: Assertion failures and other runtime errors are now reported in the Message Center, as well as being sent to the log file.
Update: Blockhe...
Update Notes
Feature: Auto-saving (check the settings dialog to set it up.)
Feature: Message Center (default key binding: F3, or press the bottom left [i] button.)
Update: Saving (both manual saving and auto-saving) now always happens in a background thread.
Update: Saving and loading projects is now faster.
Update: Blockhead now exits faster.
Bugfix: Con...
Video explaining the new things
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSIRbpt-fk
Update Notes
NOTE: Old project files will be incompatible with this version.
NOTE: I've had one user report that Windows Defender has been identifying crash_dump.exe as a trojan. This is just a tiny program that will generate a crash dump when Blockh...
Update Notes
Update: 'Screen Scaling' option added to view settings dialog (give this a try if you have a very large/high DPI monitor.)
Update: Command line arguments added:
Update Notes
Bugfix: Crash when undoing the creation of the current macro.
Bugfix: Crash when deleting a lane or track inside a macro.
Bugfix: Crash when lane or track is deleted while playback is running.
Bugfix: Crash when Start block play button is pressed.
Bugfix: Crash when chord editor Mode selector is pressed.
Bugfix: Impossible to create new input...
Since November I have been almost entirely working on UI optimization. I learned a lot of things and made a lot of mistakes. The specific thing that should be faster now is moving around within a workspace and zooming in and out with many blocks on the screen. One thing that may still cause slowdown is having many lanes expanded at once. Now that I know what I know, I have a decent understanding of how to optimize things further in the future but this is probably the last work I will do on op...
2024-01-27 10:33:22 +0000 UTC View PostIt makes me cringe a bit any time I see a video of someone using Blockhead when they start zooming or panning around in any marginally complex workspace and inevitably the interface starts updating at about 5fps. After uploading the last build I decided to take a quick look at things to figure out where the main performance issues are. That "quick look" turned into two and a half weeks of optimization work which is still ongoing.
In the past I have posted a bit about trying to optimize ...
2023-12-09 19:31:08 +0000 UTC View PostUpdate Notes
Note: A lot of code has changed under the hood for this build so a bit of instability is expected. If you are trying to actually make music in Blockhead then you might want to stick with v0.31.3 for a little bit, however I would prefer that you report bugs for the latest build only.
Note: I am using a new machine for the Linux builds now (Big thank you to Win Conway for sending me the laptop!) If you're on Linux and v0.3...
It has been a couple of weeks since the last build and I've been a bit quiet so here is an update. When I am quiet like this it just means I am busy programming. To me the most important thing is to keep programming every day because there is still so much to.
I am trying to use my time as efficiently as possible and sometimes that means staying focused on one thing and not swapping between different tasks, and not fixing bugs in parts of the code that I know are going to be rewritten, ...
2023-11-01 11:41:05 +0000 UTC View PostAnnoyingly it appears that Patreon has changed things so that you can no longer just choose to pay whatever amount you want when signing up, so I have had to create these stupid "membership tiers". If I don't create them then I also can't make posts exclusive to paying members so the last 4 builds were accidentally publicly accessible!
I created 3 memberships tiers at £2, £5 and £10 a month. They are all exactly the same in terms of what you get (alpha builds and development updates)...
2023-10-16 05:29:49 +0000 UTC View PostUpdate Notes
Update: Block resizer handles are now disabled during a drag/stamping operation.
Bugfix: Crash on project close (New/Load/Quit) if the project has at least one input buffer configured.
Bugfix: Possible hang when interacting with extremely small blocks.
Bugfix: Choke envelope shading doesn't appear on effect/sampler/synth blocks.
Bugfix: Choke envelope line doesn...
Apologies if these rapidfire updates are irritating, I am done for the day now. It just bothered me that I missed these crashes while I was testing. Those who have been around for a while will be familiar with my habit of adding 3 new bugs for every one that I fix so I'm sure there will be more to do tomorrow.
Update Notes
Bugfix: Crash when trying to move a lane (dragging on the left-hand edge.)
Bugfix: Possible crash when tri...
Update Notes
Bugfix: "Failed to locate sample record" while trying to save project.
Links
Known Issues: https://trello.com/b/MT1A3Zob/blockhead-issues
Discord: Blockhead (discord.com)
Update Notes
Feature: Right-click on a tempo guide block and enable 'Fractional BPM' to allow generating snapping points at non-integer BPMs.
Update: Blockhead will now block the entire UI on startup until the plugins have finished loading. Usually this will happen too quickly to see so there will be no visible change. However if plugins are slow to load for some reason, or if there is a general error while loading plugins, then this...
NOTE: At this point I think some of the rarer "random" crashes that are occurring are not worth me putting time into. I am planning some more large-ish refactors of some parts of the Blockhead codebase, and I don't really want to spend too much time investigating problems with code that is slated to be replaced anyway (which is where a lot of these crashes are happening.) In the meantime make ...
2023-10-10 04:31:36 +0000 UTC View PostUpdate Notes
Update: File browser bookmark buttons will now display a visual indicator if the exact path that they point to is currently selected in the file browser.
Update: The default recording threshold for newly created input buffers is now -40db (up from -60db).
Bugfix: Warp marker editing is now 100% bug-free and will not crash under any circumstances. Please let me know if it crashes.
Bugfix
2023-10-07 00:44:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
I have received a huge influx of new subscribers since posting that youtube video. It has slowed down a bit now but I am still receiving new subscribers every day so I'm still not sure where it will settle. Obviously people will come and go so it will go up and down a bit but at the time of writing I'm almost making enough money to cover my monthly expenses which is amazing.
As usual there are rumors and whispers in the wind about large companies potentially contacting me to collaborate...
2023-10-05 05:03:22 +0000 UTC View PostUpdate Notes
Bugfix: Possible crash when the project is saved.
Links
Known Issues: https://trello.com/b/MT1A3Zob/blockhead-issues
Discord: Blockhead (discord.com)
Update Notes
Update: Some more UI optimization work.
Bugfix: The button bar at the top of blocks gets all messed up whenever there are button groups.
Links
Known Issues: https://trello.com/b/MT1A3Zob/blockhead-issues
Discord: Blockhead (discord.co...
Update Notes
Update: Fixed a performance bottleneck in waveform rendering.
Update: Some block UI optimizations.
Update: Added defensive exception handling around some hard-to-reproduce crashes in the hope that it helps me debug them.
Update: Added extra logging in certain error corner cases to try to track down some rarer crashes.
Bugfix: Crash when a parameter's "Enabled" c...
I finally managed to make that video that I have been talking about making for the past two years, which explains what Blockhead is and what makes it different. In the end it is more just an explanation video rather than a tutorial (I will try to make some proper tutorial videos in the future going into proper detail on everything.)
My hope is that this video clears up some confusion about what it is I am working on and hopefully if it gets shared around then I get a bit more Patreon su...
2023-09-23 06:08:26 +0000 UTC View PostUpdate Notes
Bugfix: Crash when a tempo guide block is copied.
Bugfix: Block gestures are completely broken.
Links
Known Issues: https://trello.com/b/MT1A3Zob/blockhead-issues
Discord: Blockhead (discord.com)
Update Notes
Some subtle issues and crashes related to Send/Receive buses led to me making some large-ish changes to the way data is saved and loaded during undo/redo operations and during project saving and loading.
I usually only bump the second version number up when I add new features. Unfortunately for my own sanity I ended up making minor changes to the project file format to better support what I was doing to fix the Send/Receive bus issues.
Since I a...
2023-09-22 13:19:01 +0000 UTC View Post