Impromptu: Live Audio Programming Language

.:Impromptu Homepage:.

About a week or two ago I posted about .:Chuck:., which is an audio programming language designed for live performance. This week I have happened upon another audio programming language that is designed for live audio performance and programming. Impromptu is conceptually similar to Chuck, but it might have a little more flexibility in the sense that it can produce visuals as well as audio. It even loads AudioUnits!!! I am not exactly sure how an audio programming language would load a plugin, but it does, and it appears rather cool. In case you haven't figured it out Impromptu is Mac OSX only and is free, so all you Mac users start downloading.

Quote:
Impromptu has been developed for use in live sonic/visual performance. Live, real-time or on-the-fly programming is a performance paradigm stemming from laptop performance, but with an emphasis on the crafting of algorithms in real-time. Impromptu is designed to provide a dynamic, real-time, multi-user runtime capable of supporting the creation, modification, distribution and evaluation of source code in live performance.

Impromptu is a programmable AudioUnit host. A powerful environment for creating AudioUnit graphs of arbitrary complexity with precise programmatic control over individual AU nodes. Musical material can be precisely scheduled for performance by any AudioUnit instrument node and parameters, program changes and presets can be programmatically changed on-the-fly as well as directly via the AU's user interface.

Quartz drawing routines can be applied with the same temporal accuracy as audio material allowing composers to tightly integrate audio and visual components. Quicktime movies, bezier paths, images, CoreImage filters and beautiful text rendering are a few of the graphics features available for artists to play with.

Sounds like a nerd sound designers dream. Push forth IDM performers.

Tags: live impromptu programming language