Your favourite music programming environment?

[Lenny]

So what's your favourite music programming environment (platform, language etc)?

I'm still in process finding one. I played with extempore for few days, and while it was very interesting, I found it a bit too experimental for my taste.

My next playground is SuperCollider + overtone. It immediately feels more stable and it has tons of very interesting features. I just wish to avoid learning sclang, and honestly, I'm not really attracted too much by Clojure either. Ideally, I'd write music in emacs with common lisp (using SBCL) but my options are getting very few... There is some experimental CL interface for SC called cl-collider, but it is rather experimental.

Why Lisp, why SBCL? Simply because I'm learning that at the same time, I just decided to invest into that environment while working on some other projects... It would be so nice to have these things at the same time. SoundCollider's features are so impressive, so maybe I just accept all the Clojure's quirks..

[davephillips]

...Ideally, I'd write music in emacs with common lisp (using SBCL) but my options are getting very few...

Common Music (Lisp-based music composition languge)

http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/

Common Lisp Music (advanced sound synthesis language)

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/snd/snd/clm.html

Common Music Notation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Music_Notation

SND (soundfile editor)

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/snd/snd/snd.html

OpenMusic (music composition environment)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMusic

Btw, my personal favorite is Csound but I have experience in SuperCollider, Pure Data, RTcmix, and other similar environments.

HTH,

dp

[Lenny]

Btw, my personal favorite is Csound but I have experience in SuperCollider, Pure Data, RTcmix, and other similar environments.

May ask what language you prefer?

I'd also be extremely interested why you prefer Csound over SC.

[chaocrator]

supercollider.
(at least because signal routing in csound is a nightmare.)
i don't use it for the synthesis (anymore), because i really intend to replace all my sequencers with supercollider one day, so focused on MIDI/OSC processing and algorythmic generation/variation.

[davephillips]

Btw, my personal favorite is Csound but I have experience in SuperCollider, Pure Data, RTcmix, and other similar environments.

May ask what language you prefer?

Long ago I dabbled in C and Lisp. These days I do no direct coding, I prefer front-ends such as JP Lemoine's AVSynthesis (for composing with Csound).

I'd also be extremely interested why you prefer Csound over SC.

Historical reasons. I started using Csound in 1989 on an MS-DOS machine. SC was originally available only for the Mac, so when I learned about it I also learned that I couldn't afford the required hardware. Now I think all major development of SC takes place on Linux.

Btw, I agree with you that Linux excels in such environments. Many such languages - e.g. Csound, Cmix, cmusic - were developed on UNIX machines, Linux is a natural choice of platform for their further development.

Best regards,

dp

[shpitz]

In terms of sound quality I prefer Chuck.
In terms of flexibility I prefer pure data.

[Lenny]

In terms of sound quality I prefer Chuck.
In terms of flexibility I prefer pure data.

Wow, Chuck looks very interesting... and again new language

In general, I find the sheer amount of choices a bit problematic. I try to stick to SC for now and not install and try out anything else unless I really run to some limitations (which I seriously doubt).

About SC... I think i'll just use the slang, at least as long as I'm familiar with the basic concepts. Overtone feels a bit confusing to start with.

Then again, to keep things simple... Common Lisp Music is also very tempting. I just couldn't find any good demonstrations about its capabilities. Is it really up to full musical pieces or more like a sound design tool etc.

[davephillips]

... Common Lisp Music is also very tempting. I just couldn't find any good demonstrations about its capabilities. Is it really up to full musical pieces or more like a sound design tool etc.

Some of Rick Taube's music made with CLM/CM :

http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/#music

If you'd like to hear some music made with Csound :

https://soundcloud.com/davephillips69/s ... rks-by-dlp

(VOSIM - Dream Sequence II is my favorite)

Music made with Cabbage (Csound-based VSTs) :

https://soundcloud.com/davephillips69/sets/cabbagewerk

A couple of pieces made with SuperCollider3 :

https://soundcloud.com/davephillips69/s ... rks-by-dlp

Best,

dp

[Lenny]

Damn.... I spent afternoon hacking CSound on my system. I'm so happy the Lisp FFI interface is crashing on me and the MIDI input didn't work right away... Too.. many... languages...

You know why I stopped making music with HW synths? I was too obsessive with the devices, always tweaking, always just looking for new sounds. I though everything is different in the SW world. But what did I find? Even more options!! Damn!

SuperCollider, SuperCollider, SuperCollider......

[Lenny]

My quest for Perfect Music Programming Environment continues...

After playing with SC, I decided I cannot stand the language. I can't get a grip of it. It's ugly, there's no "big picture" anywhere, I can't use it. I hate it, to be precise.

After long and dark hacking hours with Common Music 3.9, I managed to get it working. I think I'm getting closer... CM offers a fairly standard Scheme environment, and it can control also SC. It has some pretty interesting possibilities for algorithmic real-time composition with MIDI (or SC). The only negative side of it is the damn GUI. For some reason, they decided to integrate everything into one horrible GUI application, which pales in comparison to emacs. Why, oh why did they do it???

Anyways, this is the situation now. Maybe I will just do Lisp editing with emacs, then open/update the file in the CM GUI, then play with the thing. It is a real-time compiler, just like SC. Even the evaluation keys are the same..

[AAA]

I am building my own general purpose programming language - not even a DSP DSL - to make a framework to use to make a daw to use to make plugins (in a non standard, simpler format).

I bet you none of you ever procrastinated this hard or in a way this elaborate. :P Note that I don't actually have experience in language design, so it's not likely that I'll actually get an usable language out of this project.