As a musician & coder, i have always been intrigued by this idea.. it does seem like a tricky process to "play" live - but still - could be pretty fun
Overtone
51–60 of 77 posts
Re: Overtone
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not really sure what you would use this for. "Live coding" means you go to a nightclub, hook your laptop up to the sound system and a big projector, and start programming, while everybody is watching you program and listening to the sounds your program is making.
Almost like... a synth.
Implying that this isn't a synth?
Re: Overtone
#53Max/MSP is this times a million. check it out if you haven't heard of it. cycling74.com it does the exact same things but with more options, complexity, and a more usable interface. It also has visual fx.
Signal flow approaches like Max/MSP and PureData are awesome and have their own strengths and weaknesses - but certainly they have no more or less 'options' or capacity for complexity than any similarly mature text-based DSP system like SuperCollider or ChucK.
Hey Erik ;)
Strictly Max/MSP/Jitter is a much more encompassing environment than SuperCollider and ChucK, which focus on audio. The advantage of Max is that it combines a great control language with audio programming, a great video matrix library and a dataflow OpenGL API. Generally there are many more 3rd party contributions to Max/MSP than any of the other media programming frameworks with the exception of perhaps vvvv (which is video centric).
That said, the nice thing about all of these environments is that they heavily integrate OSC messaging, which allows you to mix and match anything together. People often combine openFrameworks/Cinder and SuperCollider for instance.
Re: Overtone
#54I'm not really sure what you would use this for. I'm a musician and I can't possibly find any use for this. It would take forever to write a song in this and then you would have to mess with the timings just to make it not sound like a programmed piece of music and give it some feel.
I'm also a musician, but ...
The process looks more like that of jazz to me - finding/inventing structure & theme, reconceptualising both, collaboratively developing derived forms and then riffing on those for performance.
Unlike songwriting, that's a musical process that's always come naturally to me and I use almost exactly the same mindset when I'm on form as a developer too. I don't know if this a common experience.
Re: Overtone
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost like... a synth.
Implying that this isn't a synth?
Mm, I didn't mean to come off as a dick. Overtone is cool as hell, and is worthy of a lot of respect.
My point was, there's a reason why musicians often use "a box with a bigass row of large physical keys" to do this sort of thing.
That said, a synth costs thousands of dollars; so I love the idea of Overtone making live music more accessible to "dabblers" like me.
( Unfortunately, a MacBook also costs thousands of dollars, and I've given up hoping people still care about Windows. =) )
Re: Overtone
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Implying that this isn't a synth?
Mm, I didn't mean to come off as a dick. Overtone is cool as hell, and is worthy of a lot of respect. My point was, there's a reason why musicians often use "a box with a bigass row of large physical keys" to do this sort of thing. That said, a synth costs thousands of dollars; so I love the idea of Overtone making live music more accessible to "dabblers" like me. ( Unfortunately, a MacBook also costs thousands of do…
I don't think live coding makes live music more accessible to dabblers. Making live music that people enjoy listening to only takes a few dozen to a few hundred hours of instruction and practice, with either voice or instruments, and beyond the obvious a capella modalities, there's the harmonica, the borrowed friend's guitar, the recorder, the pan pipes, and so on, which together mean you can make pretty excellent music without spending much or any money. And it'll take you quite a lot of practice to outgrow a US$100 synth from Radio Shack. (Or wherever you buy them these days.)
By contrast, I have the impression that livecoding requires a great deal more knowledge to do in an entertaining way, and it can go wrong in many more ways.
Re: Overtone
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mm, I didn't mean to come off as a dick. Overtone is cool as hell, and is worthy of a lot of respect. My point was, there's a reason why musicians often use "a box with a bigass row of large physical keys" to do this sort of thing. That said, a synth costs thousands of dollars; so I love the idea of Overtone making live music more accessible to "dabblers" like me. ( Unfortunately, a MacBook also costs thousands of do…
I don't think live coding makes live music more accessible to dabblers. Making live music that people enjoy listening to only takes a few dozen to a few hundred hours of instruction and practice, with either voice or instruments, and beyond the obvious a capella modalities, there's the harmonica, the borrowed friend's guitar, the recorder, the pan pipes, and so on, which together mean you can make pretty excellent mu…
Ha! A $100 synth from RadioShack is precisely what I use. It even has "RadioShack" engraved into it.
Honestly I was just trying to find some good things to say about Overtone, since creativity is always a great thing and should be encouraged.
Maybe a combination of the two ideas: Overtone functions being invoked by pressing keys on a synth, with pressure/speed of the keypress being passed as function args. (But then I suppose Overtone would be "just another synth generator"... I don't know.)
Re: Overtone
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Implying that this isn't a synth?
Mm, I didn't mean to come off as a dick. Overtone is cool as hell, and is worthy of a lot of respect. My point was, there's a reason why musicians often use "a box with a bigass row of large physical keys" to do this sort of thing. That said, a synth costs thousands of dollars; so I love the idea of Overtone making live music more accessible to "dabblers" like me. ( Unfortunately, a MacBook also costs thousands of do…
You could say the same of every new instrument ever. Why use a piano when a harpsichord is so much simpler to build? (Louder, mostly, but that's not my point. And pianos were much more expensive than any previous instrument when they were new.) Why build a harpsichord if you have stringed instruments? Why put strings on an instrument...why not just bang on that stick.
New instruments provide new means of expression not previously available. That alone is reason enough to keep experimenting and building new instruments, even if most of them never go anywhere or see anything resembling widespread adoption. They expand the palette of possibilities.
If you find a full keyboard strapped to a synthesizer more conducive to what you want to express today, that's fine. There are still guitars, and drums, and harpsichords, and pianos, and analog synthesizers. This doesn't close off those options to anyone, it only opens new doors.
Cost, or being "better" than some other option in some dimension, is not the reason for something like this. New means of expression is the reason, and it is reason enough.
Re: Overtone
#59I was lucky enough to see Sam Aaron rehearse his ClojureConj course at skillsmatter last week. The room was full of musicians who know Clojure. Personally, I think overtone has potential. It's already usable as an alternative synth design tool (beats the hell out of visual design). As for taking on Cubase... There are all sorts of features it doesn't have (like a usable UI), but as sam says... pull requests are welcome. :)
Re: Overtone
#60This is what Hollywood thinks most coding is like in the world. One shot, no bugs and pure creation. All in a highly customized and beautifully responsive editing environment. Seriously though, thanks for posting this. I think music coders deserve special attention because they mix creativity and logic together so well.
It's also what Hollywood thinks music is like: pure improvisation. In the real world, both require an amazing amount of rehearsal and frustrating lack of progress on your own time before the 'performance'.
I always thought the best moment of 8-mile was when Bunny stops talking and sits down with a pen and a paper in his bedroom. It's fairly explicit that that's the point he starts on the road to being a successful musician.