[LAU] Bitwig: what we can learn from it

[David Olofson]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Gordon JC Pearce <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> wrote:
[...]
> But Csound and Supercollider are not suitable for making music.  They're fine if you're some kind of autistic savant computer genius, but utterly fucking useless if you're a musician.

Wouldn't say I'm either of those; just a rather experienced programmer
with an interest in music... Either way;

I used to think of this kind of tools as basically just powerful
synthesizers, and controlling them from a "mainstream style" sequencer
with a master keyboard and stuff pretty much seemed like the only
viable setup. I've used various versions of Cakewalk and Sonar through
the years, but obviously, I'd much rather use Linux, as that's what I
use for practically everything these days. I just haven't been able to
find a stable Linux sequencer that does what I need. (Would seem like
very basic stuff, but I guess not... o.O)

Then I started writing the synth/sound engine Audiality 2. It has a
realtime scripting language that was originally just intended as a
small but flexible replacement for the usual "five million" hardwired
features you need to do much more than playing back dry samples. I
intended to use it for both sound and music, but I was planning on
using a MIDI sequencer for the latter. However, when testing and
playing around, I discovered that just hacking music in the same
scripting language was a surprisingly viable option, and as a bonus,
offered tremendous flexibility through the seamless integration of
sounds and music.

So, I actually haven't bothered much with sequencers since! It would
be nice to have the option of recording from MIDI controllers, since
that's definitely the easiest, quickest and most natural way of doing
many things - but I think I'd actually prefer a "sequencer" that just
pastes code into my editor. :-)


What weirdness came out of this episode of insanity, then? Well, some
works in progress, mostly "chip inspired" stuff for a game I'm working
on:

    https://soundcloud.com/david-olofson/sets/audiality-2-projects


Oh, and that engine; Free/Open Source (zlib), of course:

    http://audiality.org/


-- 
//David Olofson - Consultant, Developer, Artist, Open Source Advocate

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