worm-blossom

What is Going On Here?

Each of our regular page updates comes with an embedded music track, such as the following:

If you have ever wondered what is up with that, you have come to the right place!

All these music tracks are based on (forks of) Beepbox. Beepbox is a website for creating and playing music based on a piano-roll-like interface. It can play back the song in a loop while you edit it, so you get immediate feedback and can explore things more reactively than in traditional composition. Try it out, it is fun!

Sometime in early 2023 (I think), @Adz shared a link toBeepbox in a p2panda chatroom. At this point in time, I (Aljoscha) had been struggling with chronic wrist pain for several years, leaving me unable to make (or notate) music aside from singing. I had mostly considered myself a musician who happened to know some computer science at that point in my life, so being unable to make music was pretty devastating. But it turned out that by using my left hand to control the mouse, I could do things in Beepbox! This soon became an important anchor of stability for me.

There is a not entirely small online community around Beepbox. I did not really delve into that (yet), but I did quickly graduate to Goldbox, a much more powerful fork of Beepbox. Over the years, my wrist pain has diminished, to the point where I can play the piano again (though I am still unable to practice seriously, as of writing in late 2025). But I’ve kept on noodling around with Goldbox regardless.

When we launched worm-blossom.org, it was clear from the start that I would make a track of music for each weekly update. After a couple weeks, I wanted more control of the underlying player, so we ended up with our own fork: wb-box. Its main distinguishing feature is its support for playlist pages, such as those linked at the top of this page.