○ idle toaster

  

choose an audio input

how it works

Toaster listens to whatever your PCMac plays and writes it out as Strudel code, live: the drums on a 16-step grid, the tempo, bass, chords, key and lead line. A new song starts a fresh page. It's a reconstruction for show, not an exact transcription; steady beats work best.

When the kick comes back after a break, the drop effect takes over the screen. The camera features run on this PCMac; nothing is uploaded. Your picks are remembered, except the camera, which always starts off.

look
Vbackground: spectrum, tunnel, spiral, pitch wheel, warp, cuts, worlds, chrome, spectrogram, scenery, rain, scope, off
Abackground strength; with worlds, their look: night (no light skies), film, ASCII, code, ink, risograph, cyanotype, receipt, thermal, night vision, CRT, VHS, quadtree, cells, auto; with chrome, the collage on or off; with the spectrogram, its colours: rainbow or the theme's; with the scenery, its scene: auto (a new one each song), the lake, the sea, the campfire, the snow, the city in the rain, the garden, the falls, halloween (auto picks it in October), then auto in the theme's colours
Ttheme: bluescreen, blackscreen, terminal, pink, whitescreen
Rorb: dots that take a new form every 8 bars, moved by the kick, clap and hats
Pblocks: punchcard, then dominoes, then off
Gliquid glass over the code, swelling on the kick
NID card: the song, tempo, key and a 1-bit picture; again for big, again to hide
camera
Cwebcam: tinted, big eyes, ASCII, off. Frame something with your fingers (each hand an L) for a filter window; turn a hand over or wink for the next filter, open your hands to close it. A circle of your hands (index tips together, thumb tips together) opens a portal (the first shows your skull: make it in front of your face): pull apart to grow it, spread wide and hold to fill the picture, pinch for the next look (once it fills the picture, a swipe too: hold an open hand up, then sweep it sideways, left for the next look, right for the one before), the circle again to close. Hand signs: ✌️ next theme, 👍 record, ✊ hush, 🖐 back
Kcamera effect: cut-out, slit-scan, datamosh, windows, glass, dots, voxels, none
perform
Spacetap the beat (four taps) when it gets the tempo wrong
Qhush every part; Q again or an open hand brings them back
Dfire the drop effect now
Bdrop effect: XP takeover, blue screen, not responding, off
save & share
Mrecord the window with sound, into Videos\ToasterMovies/Toaster (for TikTok or Shorts, L first)
Jsave the first two drops of each song as clips
Xexport the song so far as MIDI and Strudel code, into Music\ToasterMusic/Toaster
Oopen the code in Strudel
window
Lvertical layout
Wmini player, over your other windows
Zhide the code: just the visuals, for Toaster as a visualizer (it's still written underneath; Z again shows it)
H / Fhide the header and footer / fullscreen
Imachine readout
setup
Saudio source: system audio, demo beat, file, input
Ename the song yourself
[ / ]blocks timing: ] if they land late, [ if early

Click a key to change it.

name this song

Leave both empty to go back to what Windowsthe Mac reports.