Collaborative Programmable Music | Hacker News Reader

Collaborative Programmable Music

overtone.github.io

69 pointsxd18 comments

If anyone is interested, the default language for writing Supercollider programs is based on Smalltalk. The standard library is well organised and was a revelation to me on how to use OO properly.

The main mechanisms used for composition are lazy streams (via generators), events (via prototype-like composition), and higher level structures (via classes).

Of course the client has been replaced by Clojure in Overtone, and I'm pretty sure I've seen JavaScript clients in the wild as well...

It's worth pointing out that the underlying synthesis and routing engine is extremely versatile, with signal graphs compiled from a user-authored OO AST.

I'm looking forward to returning to Supercollider next year as I'm hoping to return to study sound design and composition. My stuff is currently at soundcloud.com/slex...

I really like the music on your Soundcloud! Would you share your current hard- and software setup?

Hey thanks for listening =) Although I own some fun toys (e.g. Nord Modular), most of my stuff is just made in Ableton with the suite effects, Max 4 Live samplers, etc. And the synth I use for pretty much everything from pads to toms to stabs to leads is the Audiorealism ABL Pro. Such a good synth.

Really enjoying your Soundcloud, and wanted to mention that I too am a SuperCollider lover. As you say, the language constructs and standard library are quite impressive, and they go a long way to facilitating creative coding.

I've been wanting to get into functional programming for a while, so I think I'm going to play with Overtone - seems like a fun way to learn Clojure!

Thanks for listening, glad you like it =) There's more to come in the next few weeks...

> I'm pretty sure I've seen JavaScript clients in the wild as well...

there are full clients for Scala and Haskell and Lua.

for those interested, full details about supercollider itself here:

http://supercollider.github.io/

the javascript one, supercollider.js (by me) is not a full client. its just intended for communicating between js web/nodejs and scsynth/sclang. so its more of a bridge system

Massive coincidence, I just wrote an ebook about hacking music with Overtone (and also Node.js) and published it on my blog. I hope the link doesn't get me hellbanned:

http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-ebook-hacking-m...

Can anyone confirm whether this is the software used by the AlgoRave collective in the article that was posted the other day. I tried looking around their websites for the software they used, the closest I reached was that it used haskell. (AlgoRave article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6808744)

This looks very similar however It doesn't mentioned haskell anywhere, despite the syntax looks like haskell/a similar functional language.

Nope, from the video, it doesn't look like they are using Overtone at all. Overtone is a Clojure frontend/library to the Supercollider synth.

They use tidal (https://hackage.haskell.org/package/tidal), and it is indeed written in Haskell.

Everyone uses different tools. Lots of people build their own. Overtone, the tool in this post, is a clojure frontend to SuperCollider (http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/). Overtone is used to describe synthesiser networks which are then executed by SuperCollider.

As the person typing in that video, I can confirm that it is tidal. Actually I am not aware of anyone else getting as far as using tidal in performance yet, hopefully soon.

Meta ex have played at a couple of algoraves using overtone.

At the algorave in Sheffield there was

* Yaxu - tidal

* Curious machine - game of life cellular automata and a visualiser on the SNES

* Sick Lincoln - SuperCollider mostly pre composed

* Shelly and some Mandelbrots - SuperCollider as well, live coded

* Section 9 - ixi lang

* Luuma - loads of crazy stuff built in c++, I think running on FPGAs

Check http://algorave.com and http://toplap.org for info, videos and links

For a talk that actually uses Overtone, I'd suggest this one: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/music-functional-language

Here is a presentation of Overtone from Sam Aaron at the clojure conj 2011. http://youtu.be/imoWGsipe4k

I'm a proficient keyboard (piano, analogue synth, workstation) and woodwind player (and not quite as proficient programmer). Can someone sell this to me as to be honest I have no idea what it does or where I could stick it in my workflow?

What do you think of ChucK for the same purpose, anyone?

Linguistically, ChucK reminds me of PHP. That said, if you want to learn it, https://www.coursera.org/course/chuck101

It looks like Java/C++, with an interesting syntax. Concurrency model and time and duration as builtin types makes it interesting.

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