Oh, thank you, David, for bringing this up. Looking at this very long list, I figured, why not make a list of languages/libraries I have actually used. Here it is:

- ABC

- ChucK

- CLM

- CMN

- Common Music

- CSound

- CYBIL

- FAUST

- HMSL

- IanniX

- KeyKit

- Lilypond

- Max/MSP

- Nyquist

- OpenMusic

- PureData

- snd

- SuperCollider

Some of them I only dabbled with, others I've used extensively.

Also, not present in the list:

- InScore - not really a programming language but enables dynamic music scores consisting of multimedia representations (image, video, music notation etc), completely driven by OSC (Open Sound Control)

- guido - Music markup language (akin to Lilypond and ABC) that handles the music notation for InScore above

And since that list contains also specialized libraries for some programming languages, I would add:

- pyo (DSP for python)

- Music21 (music analysis and (re)composition for Python)

And in case you haven't noticed, Tim Thompson, who compiled this list of computer languages for music, is also the author of KeyKit.

Joyful and healthy holidays for everyone!

Michał

On Thursday, December 25th, 2025 at 02:12, david <gnome@hawaii.rr.com> wrote:

I found this on Mastodon:

https://musician.social/users/elsemusic/statuses/115764769354069738

An extensive dictionary of the languages used for programming music.

https://timthompson.com/plum/cgi/showlist.cgi?sort=name&concise=yes

An example:

'Nyquist: A functional programming language for composition and sound synthesis. Uses a Lisp syntax, a signal processing and signal representation core, and a rich semantics dealing with time and transformations.'

Which ones have you used, if any?
--
David W. Jones
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