Noteblock Looper v. 2.2

Music is often repetitive in nature: it uses chord patterns or entire sections over and over again. In most audio/MIDI editors you can loop sections of your song, but in Minecraft every note has to be entered manually... unless you build some kind of a programmable contraption. That's exactly what this is: a device that allows you to play synchronized loops, switching noteblock tracks on and off as if they were layers in a MIDI editor. This means you can fit a 2-3 minute song into a relatively small footprint, because you don't need to rebuild the repeating sections.

To achieve this, the noteblock looper uses piston feed tapes that essentially act like punchcards. A solid block tells the system to play a particular track, and a glass block tells it to skip it on this iteration. The entire system is governed by a bunch of timers that can be tweaked using the number of items in hoppers & droppers. One clock sets the number of loops (by default it's 16 plus one silent loop; don't change that unless you also extend the feed tapes), and another one regulates the length of one loop iteration. Setting that one to 64 ticks (8 items) or 96 ticks (12 items) are probably two most useful options for common music tempos. I prefer to include 4 bars into one loop, but this too can be changed depending on your needs.

The world download features two different songs created with the current version of the looper (2.2) to show how versatile and easy to calibrate the system is. There are also their older prototypes (don't use them unless you like manually counting repeater ticks) and some general noteblock info, like a chart for counting tempo. Everything is color-coded and labelled. This should make that world quite handy for building your own copies of the machine with different songs. Now that the technical aspects have been taken care of, have fun composing!

Showcase videos: Rainbow Factory, Foggy Dew