toaster-strudel

Write a new Strudel track or extend an existing one from a brief. Use when the user wants to compose, draft, sketch, or add a track to the album in this repo, or asks for a Strudel pattern in a given vibe/genre/reference.

Generate 2-3 variations of an existing Strudel pattern for A/B comparison. Use when the user wants to explore alternatives, hear different takes, says "give me options", "try a different version", "variations on this", or wants to evolve a track without committing yet.

Generate a brand-new song by reading the whole skill rack and composing in one artist's style — chasing TIMELESS, catchy, instant-classic tunes, not pastiche. Use when the user says "turn the crank", "/turn-the-crank", "crank one out", "make a song in someone's style", or wants a fresh generated track for the album. Claude picks the artist. Bonobo-style layering crescendo; drums only if the song wants them, with a kit that FITS (Travis-Barker busy style is one option, not a default). Sparse→bloom arc (track 01 "dawn" is one example, not a required template — size the arc to the song).

The craft of memorable melody — motif construction & development, contour, melodic rhythm, call-and-response, earworm hook science, tension notes & resolution, register/range, and the common failure modes (wandering lines, no anchor, unresolved tension that just sits there). Use when writing a melody, making it catchier, building a hook, the melody feels aimless or forgettable, or you need a motif to develop across a track.

Complete reference for every sound our Strudel tracks can use — the loaded sample banks (VCSL orchestral mallets/winds, ~50 drum kits, mridangam, the full TidalCycles Dirt set, eddyflux/crate world percussion, amen breaks), the 128 General MIDI soundfont instruments (gm_violin, gm_cello, gm_string_ensemble, gm_flute, gm_choir_aahs, gm_pad_*, gm_lead_*…), the built-in synths + FM, and how to load more (github: packs, shabda→Freesound, the open-strudel-samples explorer). Use when picking a voice, reaching for instrument variety, or when a sound isn't playing.

Load a Strudel pattern into strudel.cc via agent-browser, play it, and verify it parses and runs without error. Use after composing or editing any track in this repo, or when the user says "test the track", "does this work", "play it", or wants to verify a Strudel pattern.

The craft of building sonic worlds — drones, noise beds, field recordings, granular texture, reverb and delay as architectural depth (the z-axis), the atmospheric glue layer that separates a dry sketch from an immersive environment, and the vinyl crackle/tape hiss "air" that makes digital feel lived-in. Use when a track sounds dry, sterile, or flat; when you want to add a drone or pad bed; when a field recording should glue a section; when the mix has no depth or front-to-back space; when a breakdown feels empty; when you want to make it feel like a place not just a pattern; or when someone says "it sounds cold/lifeless/2D". Siblings [[strudel-sound-design]] [[strudel-effects]] [[strudel-mixing]] [[strudel-sample-library]]; also connects [[strudel-sampling]] [[strudel-automation]] [[strudel-bass]] [[strudel-emotion]] [[strudel-pro-tips]].

The 3D spatial-reasoning skill for Blender music videos — the thing that was missing when a PS1 scene took a day to art-direct. Camera projection (world_to_camera_view frame-checks, FOV fill math), composition (scale, layers, parallax, silhouette, bold-not-timid), how to decompose a REFERENCE IMAGE into shapes+camera+palette+motion, the dawn failure-mode checklist, and straight-code shape builders (fill-frame wall, arc shell, parallax corridor, silhouette skyline, camera-relative skybox). Use BEFORE and DURING any Blender world build, whenever a shape "doesn't read," reads too small, won't fill the frame, or doesn't match a reference. Pairs with [[blender-styles]], [[blender-music-video]], [[blender-video-iteration]].

Blender 5.x animation and rigging — keyframes, FCurves, layered actions, drivers, constraints, armatures, IK/FK, shape keys, NLA editor, and bone collections via Python (bpy). Includes 5.1 changes (Smooth Gaussian FCurve modifier, Apply to Basis, layered action performance).

Build and iterate Blender music videos that feature a person/humanoid character: imported low-poly/game rigs, face/eyes, hair, clothing, accessories, body proportions, pose approval, and final-video promotion. Use when the brief includes a person, humanoid, witch, dancer, character model, face, eyes, hair, outfit, body shape, hands, arms, or a character riding/flying/performing in a Blender video.

CRT-display post-grade compositor pass for Blender music videos — phosphor bloom, scanlines, barrel distortion + chromatic aberration, colour quantize, and vignette, applied OVER any rendered style. The "old TV / arcade monitor" look as a reusable filter (the visual analog of running a track through tape). Use when a video wants CRT/retro-screen feel on top of PS1/toon/abstract/etc, or the user asks for scanlines, phosphor glow, RGB fringe, or "make it look like an old TV". Lives in tools/blender_style_kit.py (kit.crt_grade + the --crt flag). See [[blender-styles]].

Build Blender-native datamosh/glitch shader filters and optional post-render codec-smear passes for music videos. Use when the user asks for datamosh, glitch, codec smear, RGB split, video corruption, temporal tearing, blocky motion-vector trails, or a reusable Blender visual filter.

Create self-contained audio-reactive Blender MP4 music videos for tracks. Use when the user asks for visuals, an MP4, Blender scenes, shader-like effects, fog/forest/lake/ruins worlds, or wants generated render artifacts kept in the repo.

Blender 5.x Python scripting (bpy) — custom operators, UI panels, add-on development, context management, handlers, timers, property system, batch processing, and data model access. Now targets Python 3.13 (Blender 5.1).

Abstract procedural-emission style for Blender music videos — colour fields driven by Noise→ColorRamp shaders, scrolling and pulsing to the music ("Shadertoy in Eevee"). No 3D world, no silhouettes — pure motion + colour. Use for techno/IDM/ambient (Rone, Skee Mask, Floating Points, HOME). The runnable, render-verified reference style for the kit. Built on tools/blender_style_kit.py. See [[blender-styles]].

Parametric / instanced generative geometry style for Blender music videos — geometry-nodes instancing, growth, tessellation, fields of forms that evolve and react. Use for abstract/evolving music (Floating Points, Kiasmos, Skee Mask) and as the cure for the slow bespoke-mesh build. Built on tools/blender_style_kit.py; richer engines: Sverchok / Animation Nodes / Sorcar / GrowthNodes / Tissue. See [[blender-styles]].

PS1 / early-3D-RPG visual style for Blender music videos — low-poly, nearest-neighbour dither textures, vertex jitter/affine warping, and crunch-upscale. The proven house look (dawn, glade). Use when the song wants nostalgic VGM-era visuals (Mitsuda/Uematsu/Sonic/David Wise), or a warm lo-fi 3D world. Built on tools/blender_style_kit.py. See [[blender-styles]] for the kit + index.

Cel / toon NPR style for Blender music videos — hard or soft cel shading via Eevee's Shader-to-RGB + ColorRamp, bold flat colour, optional ink outlines. Use when a song wants punchy, graphic, anime/cartoon visuals (STRFKR, Sonic, Void Stranger). Built on tools/blender_style_kit.py; for advanced NPR (x-toon, hatching) use Malt/BEER. See [[blender-styles]].

Painterly / watercolor NPR style for Blender music videos — soft colour bleed, pastel palettes, paper grain, pigment-pooled edges. Use when a song is gentle, chamber, or dreamy (Esbe/lagoon, Mitsuda, Clair Obscur, Slowdive). Best done with Malt/BEER; this card also gives a kit-native Eevee approximation. Built on tools/blender_style_kit.py. See [[blender-styles]].

The visual STYLE library for music videos — the look-picker analog of the music style-* skills. A shared bpy kit (tools/blender_style_kit.py) plus per-look cards (blender-style-ps1 / -toon / -watercolor / -generative / -abstract), each a real Blender code recipe with audio-reactivity. Use when choosing or building the LOOK of a track's video, when a PS1 render feels repetitive and you want a different aesthetic, or when adding a new visual style. Pairs with blender-music-video (the pipeline) and blender-video-iteration (the probe→look→fix loop).

Iteratively improve Blender music videos with targeted still probes, contact sheets, segment renders, video-only outputs, and final audio muxing. Use when refining generated MP4 visuals, debugging visual artifacts, checking timing against music, or when the user asks to inspect/fix a specific moment in a Blender video. For low-poly rigged character limb spike/fin artifacts, see references/rigged-game-asset-pose-iteration.md.

Live-perform music in this repo by editing track files while the user listens. The browser player auto-reloads on file change and Strudel crossfades at the next cycle boundary, so each edit lands as a real-time musical patch. Use when the user says "add layers", "perform", "/loop add a layer", or wants to iterate on a track in real time. Covers the build-then-strip arc, the critical .bank() rule, pacing math, and the gotchas we learned the hard way.

The craft of making a mix sound pro and clear — frequency carving so each voice owns a band, low-end (kick vs. bass pocket, mono sub, sub vs. mid-bass), gain-staging and headroom, sidechain/ducking, panning and stereo width, depth via reverb/delay (front-to-back layers), and why amateur mixes sound muddy or flat. Use when the mix is muddy, things are fighting, gain-staging, EQ, low end, sidechain, it sounds flat, it sounds cluttered, too much reverb, nothing has space, or voices are masking each other.

Production lens for Bonobo-style tracks — organic samples, justified layers, call-and-response phrasing. Use when writing or critiquing a track that needs warmth, restraint, and humanity. Reference album Black Sands (2010). BPM range 90-140 (wider than commonly assumed), bright spectrum (median centroid 1952 Hz), modest dynamic range (~5× typical) with title-track exception that opens in real silence.

The craft of recreating a KNOWN song in Strudel — transcribing a melody you can hum into note patterns, building full-song form with arrange() or a pick() section-selector, the chiptune channel model (square/square/triangle/noise) for NES/8-bit covers, voice labels ($lead/$bass), chord()+voicing() for harmony, scale-index melodies, matching the original's timbre with gm_* voices, and the MIDI→Strudel shortcut. Ships 13 worked example covers curated from awesome-strudel (Super Mario Bros, Undertale "Determination", New Order "Blue Monday", Radiohead "Pyramid Song" + "Everything In Its Right Place", Stranger Things, Pump Up The Jam, Shostakovich Waltz 2…). Use when covering or transcribing an existing song, "make a Strudel version of <song>", "recreate this melody", "write out this tune", "chiptune/8-bit cover", "how do famous tracks get coded", or when learning idioms from real complete Strudel songs.

The craft of bass and the low end — sub vs. mid-bass layers, waveform choice, why a pure sine sub disappears on laptops and how to fix it (triangle/sawtooth + lpf ~600-800 + octave-double), the kick↔bass pocket (sidechain, tuning, rhythm carve), bassline types by genre (reese, 808/sub, acid, walking, plucked, fingered), octave displacement as a compositional device, and the GM soundfont bass voices available in Strudel. Use when: writing a bassline, "the bass is weak", "the bass is muddy", "the sub disappears on my laptop", "kick and bass clash", "write a bassline for house/DnB/hip-hop/techno/jazz", "sub bass", "808", "reese bass", "acid bass", "walking bass", "plucked bass", "the bass sounds thin", or "bass doesn't translate". Complements [[strudel-mixing]] (kick/bass frequency split, sidechain syntax, mono-sub rule) and [[strudel-sound-design]] (synthesis mechanics, filter envelopes, FM, layering model) — this skill focuses on bass as a COMPOSITIONAL + timbral design element, not mixing bookkeeping.

Comprehensive catalog of every modifier and combinator in Strudel — pattern construction, time manipulation, signal generators, randomness, scale operations, sample slicing, conditional application, polyrhythms, and stereo combinators. Use when a track feels stuck inside the same handful of tricks and you need to expand the vocabulary. Complements [[strudel-effects]] which focuses on production effects (filters, reverb, distortion, modulation).

The craft of synthesis for electronic music — subtractive signal flow (osc → filter → amp), waveform character and when to use each, ADSR + filter envelopes for movement, FM synthesis and harmonicity ratios, detune/unison for width, sub/body/air layering, saturation and "expensive" sound. Use when a synth sounds thin, cheap, or static; when you need to design a pad / bass / lead / pluck; when FM tones are wanted; when someone says "fatten it", "add movement", "make it breathe", or "the filter sounds dead". Complements [[strudel-effects]] (filter/reverb mechanics) and [[strudel-pro-tips]] (the shortlist of high-leverage moves).

Break out of 12-tone equal temperament and 4/4 — xenharmonic pitch (n-EDO via fractional MIDI, just-intonation freq ratios, neutral/harmonic "blue" notes) and odd/shifting rhythm (metric modulation, polymeter drift, Euclidean, odd meters). Use for math-rock, microtonal, maqam/oud color, Polyphia-style angularity, or any time the user says "weird", "microtonal", "math rock", "xenharmonic", "polyrhythm", "odd time". This is about NOTES and TIME — for timbral weirdness (filters, distortion, granular) see [[strudel-effects]]. For the full primitive catalog see [[strudel-modifiers]].

The craft of automation and modulation as a compositional force — using LFOs and envelopes to make parameters move OVER TIME so a track evolves instead of sitting still. Covers Strudel's continuous signal generators (sine/cosine/saw/tri/square/perlin), .range()/.slow() idioms, routing signals to any parameter (lpf/gain/pan/room/delay), coprime modulation speeds to avoid phase-lock, the .segment() trick for note-triggered voices, and the difference between static and living sound at the arrangement scale. Use when a track "sounds static", "feels robotic", "doesn't evolve", "the filter sounds dead", "automate the filter", "make it breathe", "add movement", "make it evolve", "it needs modulation", "feels stuck in a loop", or when a section is too long without changing.

The meta-skill for musical emotion — the craft of making a track FELT, not just heard. Covers tension & release, expectation & surprise (and violated expectation as the engine of chills), dynamics as emotion, space/silence as feeling, contrast, building and paying off, and the "earned" climax. Use when a track is technically fine but emotionally flat, when you want to make it move people, when it doesn't feel like anything, when the drop doesn't hit, when you're wondering why the build isn't building, when something needs more weight, or when asking "why does this track feel hollow?" The WHY behind [[strudel-arrangement]], [[strudel-harmony]], and [[strudel-melody]]. Read this before writing tracks; re-read it when something is technically correct but fails to land.

The craft of sampling and resampling in modern electronic music — chopping/slicing breaks to tempo, granular texture, time-stretch, flipping and layering samples, the sample-based workflow (Bonobo tail-sampling, DJRUM generational resampling, Skee Mask break-processing), and resampling your own Strudel output. Use when chopping a break, flipping a sample, building granular texture, working with amen/breaks165/amen1-3, reaching for the DSR tail of a sample, layering samples by frequency zone, or asking "how do I resample". Non-obvious working-producer knowledge. Complements [[strudel-modifiers]] (full method catalog), [[strudel-effects]] (filters/reverb), [[strudel-sample-library]] (what's loaded), [[strudel-groove]] (break-chopping as groove strategy), [[strudel-sound-design]] (layering philosophy), [[strudel-pro-tips]] (high-leverage shortlist).

The craft of building a full track from sections — how intro/build/drop/breakdown/bridge/outro work together, 8/16/32-bar phrasing, the energy arc, tension and release, when to add vs strip layers, negative space, and the most common structural mistakes. Use when arranging a track, the arc feels flat, you're wondering what comes after the intro, a section feels too long or too short, deciding section order, the drop doesn't hit, a breakdown feels empty, or the track doesn't build anywhere. Siblings [[strudel-harmony]] [[strudel-melody]] [[strudel-groove]] [[strudel-mixing]] [[strudel-sound-design]] [[strudel-genres]]; mechanics [[strudel-transitions]] [[strudel-conduct]] [[strudel-compose]] [[strudel-pro-tips]].

Genre blueprints for electronic music — tempo ranges, drum-pattern signatures, bass character, structure, key sounds, and the one defining rule for each genre. Use when writing a techno/house/dnb/ambient/trance/IDM/dubstep/synthwave/lo-fi/downtempo/trip-hop track, asking "what BPM for X", "make it sound like [genre]", or needing genre conventions before composing. Distinct from the style-* skills (individual producers); this is the shared construction grammar every producer in that genre follows.

The craft of rhythm and groove in electronic music — why a beat feels good (or stiff). Covers swing/shuffle, the pocket, drum programming by genre (house, techno, hip-hop, jungle/DnB), ghost notes and velocity dynamics, humanization vs. quantization, polyrhythm and polymeter via Euclidean patterns, and the kick-bass lock. Use when the beat feels stiff or robotic, the drums need life, you want to add swing or shuffle, you're programming a drum pattern for a specific genre, or anything about ghost notes, groove, velocity, feel, pocket, polyrhythm, or making drums human.

The craft of harmony and chord progressions for modern electronic and cinematic music — which progressions work and WHY, voice leading, borrowed chords, modal interchange, extended voicings (7ths, 9ths, sus), cadence and resolution, emotional function, key/mode choice. Use when someone asks "what chords", "a progression for", "make it sound sad/hopeful/epic/dark/dreamy", "what key or mode should I use", "voicing", "how to borrow a chord", "why does this feel off", or wants to move beyond basic triads.

The compositional craft of making sections FLOW — transitions, ramps, gain-staging, and the dynamic arc across a track's section files (tracks/<id>/NN.strudel). The player crossfades at the cycle boundary technically, but whether the seam feels musical is something you have to write. Use when building or arranging a section arc, when a track feels flat / same-volume throughout, when a section change feels jarring, or when the user mentions transitions, ramps, gain diffs, risers, fills, drops, or "the arc."

Good-to-knows from experienced Strudel / TidalCycles live coders — the high-leverage techniques that punch above their weight (scale-index melodies, chord+voicing, off() call-and-response, filter envelopes, detune-fatten, break-chopping) and the performance mindset (groove over complexity, embrace happy accidents, one motif many timbres). Use when a track feels amateur, you're hand-spelling notes the hard way, or you want the moves pros reach for first. Complements [[strudel-modifiers]] / [[strudel-effects]] (the full catalogs) with the *which-ones-actually-matter* shortlist.

Reference for every filter, modulation, and pattern effect in Strudel — the "weird stuff" toolbox. Use when a track sounds flat and needs movement, distortion, granular texture, or character. Organised by category, with idiomatic usage and what each effect *actually does to your ear*.