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boocli is a screen-less ("headless") audio looper, based on Jack audio, synchronized with an external MIDI clock signal.
boocli (pronounced "book - Lee") comes from "boucle", the french word for "loop". And this is exactly what boocli is: an audio looper. One of the challenge of any musician (keyboard, guitar, bass) playing along with a beatbox/groovebox is to create audio loops that are fully in sync with the beat. Any slight desync is audible, and, after some bars, result in drifting between the audio loop (keyboard, guitar, bass, etc) and the groovebox.
boocli aims at being a looper that is always in sync with the groovebox. As a musician, you can record and play multiple tracks, they will always be played in sync with the main tempo, ie. the main clock of your groovebox.
- work with Jack audio, alongside other software (a2jmidid)
- work on a limited piece of hardware, ie. Raspberry PI 3B "headless" at minimum
- work without any "on screen" UI. You control the looper through a midi launchpad-type of device
- work with a master midi clock coming from the groovebox
- work with a soundcard connected to the Raspberry PI that captures audio from your guitar/bass/keyboard/microphone etc
- be configurable, ie. you can edit a config file so your own midi launchpad is supported as the UI device
- Raspberry PI with Jack, boocli, and a2jmidid (for midi support of ALSA hardware in Jack)
- a groovebox connected to MIDI CLOCK port of boocli (check out the Jack graph view): this is your master clock, everything will be sync'ed to it! For that one, you would prefer USB MIDI connection over to usual DIN5 serial MIDI. Time-wise, USB is much more stable and accurate than DIN5, which usually causes drifting/desync.
- a launchpad connected to MIDI IN and MIDI OUT ports of boocli (again... graph view in Jack!), to be used as UI device
- a soundcard connected to audio IN and OUT of boocli: to capture your play
Once you have worked the boocli.cfg config file, you are good to go and will never be out of sync anymore!
Hope you'll like it!
Do not hesitate to comment or contribute!
Here are the main functionalities of boocli:
- 6 tracks looper
- 2 modes : BBT (bar-beat-tick), ie. sync'ed with bars and beats defined by midi clock, and free
- changeable time signature: usual 4/4 but also 2/2, 2/4, 3/4, 6/8, 9/8, 12/8, 5/4
- synchronization between midi clock and internal BBT of boocli done by pressing "Start" (midi start 0xFA message) on midi clock device
- load and save functions
- mute and solo functions
- adjustable volume (-, +) from 0% to 100% by increments of 10%
- play and record available in BBT and free modes. In BBT, play and record start and stop with the next bar
- delete function to clear a record, available in BBT and free modes
- ability to record upto 5 minutes loops, or a pre-defined number of bar (1 to 16)
- user interface fully controlled through midi control surface
Explore the rest of the wiki to learn more about boocli!
Do not hesitate to check developer notes if you want to participate to improvement of boocli.