28 Sep
2008
28 Sep
'08
6 p.m.
On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Darren Landrum
<darren.landrum(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote:
I thought I was clear on this, but I'll restate:
We need this so that
people who are not skilled coders, but have other skills, in math and
physics and electronics perhaps, can bring their skills to bear in
making synths and effects while making the coding side as painless as
possible. The end result will hopefully be synths and effects usable by
*musicians* and not just other coders. Click and play, as it were.
It sounds like you either want FAUST, which is a good way to basically
write down mathematics since it is a functional language, and
generates plugins. Or you want a MATLAB/Octave compiler of some kind.
That would certainly be cool.
Obviously you don't see what you need in the tools that are available
but I think you're having a hard time describing exactly what that is.
Languages like CSound, ChucK and SuperCollider really do allow you to
do a lot of things. On-the-fly programming, per-sample control of
audio, simplified languages specifically targeted to audio. Can you
describe exactly what it is these cannot do? Otherwise you can
always write a plugin for any of these in C.
I want my musical skills to be all I need to be able
to make music on Linux.
Well, making music on computers has always required a certain amount
of technical ability. But there are many paradigms for music-oriented
human-computer interaction: the DAW, the special-purpose programming
language, the sequencer, the MIDI synth, the input-output effect
processing, the artificial intelligence automatic accompaniement, the
score follower, the notation generator. All of these are possible in
one way or another on Linux. You haven't explained better what you
mean by "musical skills" and "make music on Linux", so it's hard
to
answer you more exactly.
That the international community persists in using VSTs and
FruityLoops and Cubase and Logic Audio, I have no idea. Probably the
interfaces are just more simple (definitely not true for Logic Audio),
and the availability of (often pirated) VST synths makes things
attractive. Probably marketing also plays a large roll in this.
Granted certain programs like Ableton Live or Serato have few
counter-parts on Linux.
Perhaps it's because programming O-S software is often oriented
towards scratching an itch. The cross-section people who are both
coders and musicians isn't all that large, so only some of the large
set of possible itches will ever get scratched.
Steve