I found this amazing list of programming languages for music via reaktorplayer. I haven't heard of so many of them! I just wanted to share the list as I know some people will be really interested.
I've been doing this stuff for a while. The problem with a lot of these is that it's a big investment to learn them ... and then the one phd student who was working on it loses interest.
I will say that keykit is underappreciated in its awesomeness though. I was making a lot of these neat algorithmic + animated parameter control surfaces 10 years ago with it!
I think that might give people the wrong impression.
Sure there are some music programming languages that are poorly supported and a bit more fly-by-night. But there are many that have incredibly deep communities supporting them, have been around for years and are very stable.
Add ChucK to that short list of major currently-active languages. It's very new compared to most of the list, but it was developed by the guys from Smule, and is under the hood of many (possibly all) of their iOS apps. It has active development and a good community.
Also, Kyma and Symbolic Composer are currently-sold-and-supported commercial packages, but because they are both very expensive, there's a lot less of a community around them.
Now what I'm wondering is: now that Apple allows BASIC on iOS, can we also have PD, Supercollider, or ChucK?
All of these have been ported successfully to iOS, but due to Apple's limitations couldn't be offered as program-it-yourself apps.
"Now what I'm wondering is: now that Apple allows BASIC on iOS, can we also have PD, Supercollider, or ChucK?"
We have PD (at least as an audio library on iOS). http://gitorious.org/pdlib Then there's also the RjDj apps that support loading PD patches. (They call them "scenes".)
SuperCollider and ChucK are both GPL and might face serious issues getting onto the App Store unless their copyright holders agree to change the licensing. I'm not sure the Smule people (who control ChucK) are interested in that.
pdlib isn't sufficient. What I think most tweakers are interested in is to be able to develop patches on the device itself.
How difficult would it be to implement an iOS/android-friendly front-end to open-ended pd patching using pdlib? (I'm not asking this rhetorically, I'm actually asking...)
When I'm clicking on the link it opens some Twitter dialog asking me to connect... Is it normal? I'm probably missing something here...
ReplyDelete@Mat
ReplyDeletethe page is here :
http://www.nosuch.com/plum/cgi/showlist.cgi?sort=name&concise=yes
http://twitter.com/reaktorplayer
@johnnyg0
ReplyDeleteThanks!
I've been doing this stuff for a while. The problem with a lot of these is that it's a big investment to learn them ... and then the one phd student who was working on it loses interest.
ReplyDeleteI will say that keykit is underappreciated in its awesomeness though. I was making a lot of these neat algorithmic + animated parameter control surfaces 10 years ago with it!
I think that might give people the wrong impression.
ReplyDeleteSure there are some music programming languages that are poorly supported and a bit more fly-by-night. But there are many that have incredibly deep communities supporting them, have been around for years and are very stable.
Reaktor, MaxMSP, PureData, SuperCollider, CSound
I agree those you mentioned are here to stay. I'm talking more about the more obscure ones which this list highlights.
ReplyDeleteI'm not 'against' these programs by any means... I hope the good ones will have a chance to shine even if they are obscure at the moment.
I'm just pointing out an issue to be aware of if you're going to invest time/effort into learning this stuff.
Add ChucK to that short list of major currently-active languages. It's very new compared to most of the list, but it was developed by the guys from Smule, and is under the hood of many (possibly all) of their iOS apps. It has active development and a good community.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Kyma and Symbolic Composer are currently-sold-and-supported commercial packages, but because they are both very expensive, there's a lot less of a community around them.
Now what I'm wondering is: now that Apple allows BASIC on iOS, can we also have PD, Supercollider, or ChucK?
All of these have been ported successfully to iOS, but due to Apple's limitations couldn't be offered as program-it-yourself apps.
@Jonathan
ReplyDelete"Now what I'm wondering is: now that Apple allows BASIC on iOS, can we also have PD, Supercollider, or ChucK?"
We have PD (at least as an audio library on iOS). http://gitorious.org/pdlib Then there's also the RjDj apps that support loading PD patches. (They call them "scenes".)
SuperCollider and ChucK are both GPL and might face serious issues getting onto the App Store unless their copyright holders agree to change the licensing. I'm not sure the Smule people (who control ChucK) are interested in that.
pdlib isn't sufficient. What I think most tweakers are interested in is to be able to develop patches on the device itself.
ReplyDeleteHow difficult would it be to implement an iOS/android-friendly front-end to open-ended pd patching using pdlib? (I'm not asking this rhetorically, I'm actually asking...)