Musical Universes of Discourse

MUD is a layer over Overtone which focuses on immediacy of expression and creation.

Overtone is extremely powerful at the cost of verbosity. Live coding requires quite a lot of code. Snippet expansion can help alleviate but it does hinder the range of expression and clutters the visual experience for the audience reading along with the code.

Install

Add in your project.clj file:

[mud "0.1.2-SNAPSHOT"]

Usage

Timing

Everything you need to drive synths at beats

(use '[mud.core])
(require '[mud.timing :as time])

;;set the rate
(ctl time/root-s :rate 8.)

;;Set timing controls on a Synth

(defsynth seqer
"Plays a single channel audio buffer."
[buf 0 rate 1 out-bus 0 beat-num 0 pattern 0  num-steps 8 
 beat-bus (:count time/main-beat)     ;; Our beat count
 beat-trg-bus (:beat time/main-beat)  ;; Our beat trigger
 amp 0.7
 rate-start 0.1
 rate-limit 0.9]
(let [cnt      (in:kr beat-bus)
      rander (mod cnt 1)
      beat-trg (in:kr beat-trg-bus)
      bar-trg  (and (buf-rd:kr 1 pattern cnt)
                    (= beat-num (mod cnt num-steps))
                    beat-trg)
      vol      (set-reset-ff bar-trg)]
  (out out-bus (* vol amp (scaled-play-buf :num-channels 1 :buf-num buf :rate (t-rand:kr rate-start rate-limit rander) :trigger bar-trg)))))


(defonce kick-seq (buffer 256))
(doall (map #(seqer :beat-num %1 :pattern kick-seq :num-steps 8 :buf (freesound-sample 194114)) (range 0 8)))

(pattern! kick-seq [1 0 0 1 0 0 0]
                   [1 0 0 1 0 0 0]
                   [1 0 0 1 0 1 0])

Callback on beats

We can define callbacks in Clojure land firing on various beat events.

(defonce pulse-s (freesound-sample 194114))

;;Every 256 beat trigger sample
(on-beat-trigger 256 #(mono-player pulse-s))

;;Dividing beats into 32 parts play sample at 31st beat
(sample-trigger 31 32 #(mono-player pulse-s))

;;Or express as a list pattern with 1 => hit.
(sample-trigger [1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0] #(mono-player pulse-s))

;;Fire once on beat 0 dividing beats into 128 parts and then remove callback.
(one-time-beat-trigger 0 128 #(mono-player pulse-s))

;;Callbacks can take the current beat as an argument, useful for varying a sample:
(one-time-beat-trigger 0 128 (fn [beat] (mono-player pulse-s :rate (if (= 0 (mod beat 256)) 1.0 1.1))))

;;Remove all registered triggers
(remove-all-sample-triggers)
(remove-all-beat-triggers)

Chords

Use a single synth/inst def to play chords.

(use '[mud.core])
(use '[mud.chords])

(def singing-chord-g
  (chord-synth general-purpose-assembly 3 :amp 0.0 :noise-level 0.05 :beat-trg-bus (:beat time/beat-1th) :beat-bus (:count time/beat-1th) :attack 0.1 :release 0.1))

(:bufs   singing-chord-g) ;; Access all the bufs of a chord.
(:synths singing-chord-g) ;; Access all the running synths of a chord.

(chord-pattern! singing-chord-g [[:C3 :E3 :F3]])

(ctl (:synths singing-chord-group-g) :amp 0.2)

Fast composition of Chords and degrees

Make it easier to write a score, when switching of scales/chords

(degrees-seq [:f3 1614 :F2 11 :C3 11]) ;;Lowercase -> minor
                                       ;;Uppercase -> major

;;a first inversion, b second inversion, etc.
;; :sus4*2 is a shortcut for [:sus4 :sus4]
(chords-seq [:F3 1 :6b :1c 4 :sus4 :sus4*2])

;;Repeat a group of chords n times. Group is surronded by `[]`
;; Also pass a string rather than an array.
(chords-seq "F3 [1 6b 1c 4 sus4]*8 sus4*2")

Patterns

Writing patterns to buffers.

(use '[mud.core])

(defonce notes-buf (buffer 128))

;;Write a pattern immediately
(pattern! notes-buf (degrees [5 3 7] :minor :F3)) ;; Degrees
(pattern! notes-buf [:A5 :A3 :A7])                ;; Notes

;;Write a pattern on a beat one time (based on main-beat by default)
(one-time-beat-trigger 0 128 #(pattern! notes-buf (degrees [5 3 7] :minor :F3)))

;;Keep writing a pattern every nth beat.
(pattern-repeat! 8 notes-buf #(degrees (shuffle [5 3 7]) :minor :F3))

Euclidean distribution for beats (From 'The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms' (Toussaint 2005)).

;;Spread 1 hit over 4
(spread 1 4)   ;;=> [1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0]

;; Spread 3 hit over 8
(spread 3, 8)  ;;=> [1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0]

;;Spread 7 hit over 11
(spread 7, 11) ;;=> [1.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 1.0 1.0 0.0 1.0 1.0 0.0 1.0] 

;;Rotations to the next strong beat

;;Without rotation a spacing of 332
(spread 3 8)   ;;=> [1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0) 
;;With rotation a single rotation spacing of 323
(spread 3 8 1) ;;=> [1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0]

(defonce drum-hits (buffer 128))
(pattern! drum-hits (spread 1 4))

Goals

• Its centered around using Supercollider for timing rather than Java.
• Buffers are the default way to express patterns.
• Keep it Clojure, support Clojures fns to manipulate patterns.

Thanks

• Elise Huard for the artwork

License

Copyright © 2014-present Joseph Wilk

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License either version 1.0 or (at your option) any later version.