Questions on development status, sclang dependancy and plugins

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Dionysis Athinaios

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Jan 12, 2019, 2:55:36 PM1/12/19
to Overtone
Hello all,

I've been a SuperCollider user for more than a decade and I'm checking for alternatives to sclang.
I've been wanting to get into functional programming for some time and consider contributing to and using Overtone.

A few initial questions:

1) Is the project still actively developed?
2) Is overtone a wrapper around sclang or an interface to scsynth?
3) Is there a way to create VST or AU plugins from Overtone?

Best Wishes,

Dionysis

Dionysis Athinaios

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Jan 12, 2019, 5:14:28 PM1/12/19
to Orm Finnendahl, over...@googlegroups.com
Hi Orm,

Thank you for the detailed reply! Appreciated :)

It doesn’t seem that Overtone is what I am looking for then… Plus I didn’t realise that closure uses the JVM. Relation with Java was the reason that I didn’t want to try ScalaCollider.

If you are looking for an actively maintained alternative to sclang
(the main reason why I started using it in the first place): I started
using a common lisp port of sclang called cl-collider, which also
compiles. The additional advantage is that there are many packages
related to pro audio work (there is even a fantastic realtime computer
music system called incudine).

Thanks for this! I am going to have a look! The reason I am interested in this is first, learning a functional programming language - and Lisp sounds great plus I am a Spacemacs user - but also to get away from the GPL restrictions on sclang. It is quite frustrating how difficult it is to find professional application of such a great tool because of licensing limitations.

Contact me off list if you need infos regarding common lisp. I'm
maintaining some packages (https://github.com/ormf) and might be able to
help.

I will indeed :)

Best Wishes,

Dionysis Athinaios

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Hi,

I'm not the maintainer but have used overtone for similar reasons two
years ago, but abandoned it as I found out I came too late to the
party.


Am Samstag, den 12. Januar 2019 um 11:21:20 Uhr (-0800) schrieb Dionysis Athinaios:
Hello all,

I've been a SuperCollider user for more than a decade and I'm checking for 
alternatives to sclang.
I've been wanting to get into functional programming for some time and 
consider contributing to and using Overtone.

A few initial questions:

1) Is the project still actively developed?

No. I tried to fix things, make it compatible to newer versions of
supercollider and to add some gui back then but ultimately stopped it
as it felt like beating a dead horse. Admittedly part of it also had
to do with my impression that clojure's advantage (being based on
Java) ist also its disadvantage as you end up having to deal with
Java's native midi interface (which is not on par with current
professional systems) or gui systems which I found extremely
inconvenient to use and which were eating up insane amounts of cpu
without the option to tune things.

2) Is overtone a wrapper around *sclang* or an interface to
*scsynth*?

The latter. It includes a compiler for synthdefs written in clojure.

3) Is there a way to create *VST* or *AU* plugins from Overtone?

I don't think so.

If you are looking for an actively maintained alternative to sclang
(the main reason why I started using it in the first place): I started
using a common lisp port of sclang called cl-collider, which also
compiles. The additional advantage is that there are many packages
related to pro audio work (there is even a fantastic realtime computer
music system called incudine).

In addition there is a haskell port for scsynth, if you want to go the
hardcore functional path, but I don't know, how actively it is
maintained and never used it.

Regarding VST and AU you might want to look at faust. There is also a
functional language called pure which offers tight integration with
faust.

Contact me off list if you need infos regarding common lisp. I'm
maintaining some packages (https://github.com/ormf) and might be able to
help.

Best,
Orm

Tom Murphy

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Jan 12, 2019, 6:27:47 PM1/12/19
to over...@googlegroups.com, Orm Finnendahl
<shameless plug>
If you want to explore functional programming, you can also use Vivid
(https://vivid-synth.com/) - a DSL in Haskell for scsynth/supernova.
</shameless plug>

On 1/12/19, Dionysis Athinaios <d.ath...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Orm,
>
> Thank you for the detailed reply! Appreciated :)
>
> It doesn’t seem that Overtone is what I am looking for then… Plus I didn’t
> realise that closure uses the JVM. Relation with Java was the reason that I
> didn’t want to try ScalaCollider.
>
>> If you are looking for an actively maintained alternative to sclang
>> (the main reason why I started using it in the first place): I started
>> using a common lisp port of sclang called cl-collider, which also
>> compiles. The additional advantage is that there are many packages
>> related to pro audio work (there is even a fantastic realtime computer
>> music system called incudine).
>
> Thanks for this! I am going to have a look! The reason I am interested in
> this is first, learning a functional programming language - and Lisp sounds
> great plus I am a Spacemacs user - but also to get away from the GPL
> restrictions on sclang. It is quite frustrating how difficult it is to find
> professional application of such a great tool because of licensing
> limitations.
>
>> Contact me off list if you need infos regarding common lisp. I'm
>> maintaining some packages (https://github.com/ormf
>> <https://github.com/ormf>) and might be able to
>> <https://github.com/ormf>) and might be able to
>> help.
>>
>> Best,
>> Orm
>
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Dionysis Athinaios

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Jan 13, 2019, 6:02:50 AM1/13/19
to over...@googlegroups.com
Hello Tom,

Thank you for the link. Not a shameless plug at all. It its always great to see projects like yours :)

A couple of questions.

1) I have seen the project but I am not clear on the stage of development and what is the current implemented functionality, limitations etc. Could you offer any info on that?
2) On the website I see that to use TidalCycles the example is running sclang code. Why is that? Is vivid a wrapper for sclang or using only the server?

Thank you :)

Dionysis

ami...@gmail.com

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Jan 13, 2019, 12:34:00 PM1/13/19
to over...@googlegroups.com


> El 13 ene 2019, a las 6:02 AM, Dionysis Athinaios <d.ath...@gmail.com> escribió:
>
> Hello Tom,
>
> Thank you for the link. Not a shameless plug at all. It its always great to see projects like yours :)
>
> A couple of questions.
>
> 1) I have seen the project but I am not clear on the stage of development and what is the current implemented functionality, limitations etc. Could you offer any info on that?

It's in active development in the sense I'm adding features and fixing issues, but the big features have pretty much stabilized at this point. I've been using it for a few years and it does pretty much everything I need it to. The biggest limitations/incomplete parts are:
- The way we do envelopes is generally fine but has a few rough edges and may change in the future
- Not all UGens are implemented. Implementation is mainly demand driven: if I or someone else needs one I add it. This means the more frequently-used the UGen, the more likely it is to be implemented. Implementation is simple&quick, though.

> 2) On the website I see that to use TidalCycles the example is running sclang code. Why is that? Is vivid a wrapper for sclang or using only the server?
>

The sclang is just for Tidal. Vivid only uses scsynth/supernova.

Tom

Dionysis Athinaios

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Jan 14, 2019, 4:13:45 PM1/14/19
to over...@googlegroups.com
Thank you for the additional info Tom. I got one book on Haskell and one on Lisp to help me decide which one I want to check first. You might see me asking questions on Vivid in the future :)

Best Wishes,

Dionysis
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