Chuck : Strongly-timed, Concurrent, And On-the-fly Audio Programming Language

For those of you looking for an alternative to just having to use Live, check out a programming language.

.:Chuck Website:.

ChucK is a new audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, and performance - fully supported on MacOS X, Windows, and Linux. ChucK presents a new time-based concurrent programming model, which supports a highly precise and fundamental level of expressiveness (we call this strongly-timed), as well as multiple, simultaneous, dynamic control rates, precise and straightforward concurrency, and the ability to add, remove, and modify code on-the-fly - while the program is running. In addition, ChucK supports MIDI, OSC, HID input devices, and multi-channel audio. It's fun and easy to learn, and offers composers, researchers, and performers a powerful and flexible programming tool for building and experimenting with complex audio synthesis programs and real-time interactive control. Happy ChucKing!


Tags: Chuck audio programming language

The Development of Chuck

The above video is a nice introduction inside the development of Chuck, the live performance programming language being developed by the brain heads over at Princeton. Well worth the watch.

You can find out some more information about Chuck on some of our previous posts.

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

Micro Laptop Roundup

Well it looks like we are out of the convention season and from that we have seen quite the round of micro-laptops coming out from different manufacturers.  Everything from the Asus eeePC to the OLPC it looks like micro-laptops are here to stay, and for the better I say.  Since we have there seems to be quite a few of these little laptops coming out on the market I think it might bet worthwhile to perhaps provide everyone with an overview of the features and specs between the laptops.  I have whipped up a little chart above comparing some of the features for each of the laptops. Some have better values over others, but overall I think they all have a unique perspective that they could bring to the table for Live artists.

As I have mentioned before, you are probably not going to be running Ableton Live on this platform, but some other software such as music programming languages, trackers or midi software might be perfect for them and since I am mentioning it I think I might as well list some of the software out there that I think could be useful for for performing or general music production

Music Programming Languages
ChucK
CSound
Pure Data
Bidule

Trackers
MilkyTracker
Renoise
CheeseTracker
Jeskola Buzz
Psycle
Modplug Tracker
Goattracker (8-bit Emulator)
Raster Music Tracker (8-bit Emulator)

Midi Software
IXI Software
SEQ24
Tutka
[ttrk] TekTracker
MidiOX

Well that is just a small taste of some of the software I think these machines might be useful for. I am sure all of the readers could come up with much more creative ideas themselves and I am sure you are all aware of software I have never heard of.