CLAVIER-36 is a programming environment for generative music. Programs are laid out in a two-dimensional grid, and evolve over time according to a fixed set of rules. The system is much like a cellular automaton, in that most of the rules governing the evolution of the system are local.

C36 programs describe sequences of discrete events in time. The environment includes a primitive sampler, as a self-contained means of interpreting these events as sound. For full expressivity, though, the system is best used as a generator of data for interpretation by an external musical instrument, such as a synthesizer.

The project was very directly inspired by Orca (https://100r.co/site/orca.html). It began as my own from-scratch implementation of Orca and diverged over time.

It's written in C, and compiled to WASM for the browser.

See the following pages for more info:

about page: https://clavier36.com/about

user manual: https://clavier36.com/manual

tutorial video: https://youtu.be/rIpQmJVMjCA