Introduction

anupars (อนุภา(ส), “tiny following light” in Thai) is a terminal-based musical sequencer driven by regular expressions - a reimagining of anu, built for resource-constrained devices and live performance.

A regex you type becomes your musical rule: matched cells trigger MIDI, everything else passes silently. The playhead traverses a text grid, and the pattern you write determines what sounds.

Features

• Regex sequencing: type any regex, matched cells fire MIDI, unmatched pass silently
• Resizable playhead: a 2D rectangle traverses the grid, move with h/j/k/l, resize with H/J/K/L
• Movement modes: Forward, Reverse, Pendulum, Random, switchable mid-performance
• Sweep mode: vertical crosshair sweeps columns, triggering all matched cells simultaneously
• Sweep tilt: angle the crosshair diagonally to spread triggers across MIDI channels
• Sweep CC: map crosshair position to a MIDI CC value, sawtooth, triangle, or S&H LFO shapes from movement
• MIDI channel splitting: split the grid into up to 16 sub-grids, each on its own channel
• Arpeggiator mode: playhead hops only between regex matches, turning patterns into melodic sequences
• Drone mode: sustains matched notes at a movable vertical line, independent of playback
• Dual spatial keyboard: top (x-axis) or left (y-axis) layout, toggle with ~
• Scale selection: 16 scales including microtonal Thai 7-TET, with per-axis root note control
• Queue system: FIFO event dispatch, push positions and operators, pop to execute
• Adjustable BPM: change tempo live with > / <, adjust beat division with } / {
• MIDI in/out selector: choose from available devices for flexible routing to synths, DAWs, or hardware
• MIDI clock: full in/out sync: Start, Stop, Continue, Tick, Song Position Pointer
• Tiny binary: ~900 KB release build

Getting Started

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./anupars
chmod +x ./anupars
./anupars

.\anupars.exe

chmod +x ./anupars
./anupars

git clone https://github.com/karnpapon/anupars.git
cd anupars
cargo run

Once running:

1. Open the menubar with Ctrl+b → select a MIDI output under MIDI.
2. Type a regex (e.g. [aeiou]) - matching cells highlight in real time.
3. Press Esc to switch focus to the grid, then move the playhead with h/j/k/l.
4. Press Space to start playback.

Tutorials

The Tutorials section walks through each feature interactively with live demos - start there if you prefer learning by doing.