25 Dec
2025
25 Dec
'25
8:12 a.m.
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
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com
"My password is the last 8 digits of π."
25 Dec
25 Dec
8:30 a.m.
New subject: [LAU] Re: Languages used for programming music
I've only ever used Lilypond myself, which I really love (I still use it to
quickly write down ideas) but that may arguably be more tailored towards
beautiful sheet music, rather than actually programming music. If the BASIC
music commands in my old MSX from the 80s counts, then I used those too :-D
Lorenzo
Il gio 25 dic 2025, 08:12 david <gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com> ha scritto:
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. Jonesgnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, communityhttp://dancingtreefrog.com
"My password is the last 8 digits of π."
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9:56 a.m.
New subject: [LAU] Re: Languages used for programming music
Am 25.12.25 um 08:12 schrieb david:
Which ones have you used, if any?
* ABC (my
favourite notation language, at least for non-orchestral music)
* Chuck - liked it, but found it lacking features I wanted
* FAUST (my DSP programming language of choice nowadays)
* Lilypond - never used it extensively, but when I write my first
symphony, I will ;-)
* Pure data - powerful, not my cup of tea, I like text-based programming
* MusicXML - not really a programming / notation language, but an
exchange format, imo.
- JSFX, Snd, STK, SuperCollider
Merry Christmas
Chris
7:39 p.m.
New subject: [LAU] Re: Languages used for programming music
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(a)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
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com
"My password is the last 8 digits of π."
27 Dec
27 Dec
1:38 a.m.
New subject: [LAU] Re: Languages used for programming music
Ah, thanks! Long list.
I think I remember ABC. The very first cell phones we bought let you
input ABC and use them as ring tones. Surprisingly capable for phones
limited to text-only input with no way to play any other audio formats.
I've considered finding various ways to combine pi, e (natural
logarithm) and other irrational mathematical numbers into music. Right
now, it's all manual. But if it could be done programmatically, it might
be more fun. At least faster.
Ages ago, I programmed in Commodore BASIC, FORTH, Postscript (yes, it is
a full Turing-complete language!), XML/XSLT, and Wordperfect Office
macro language (competitor to MS Office VisualBasic). I used to be able
to read C and C++ but have never programmed in them.
Any advice?
On 12/25/25 08:39, MS lists wrote:
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(a)hawaii.rr.com>
wrote:
--
David W. Jones
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com
"My password is the last 8 digits of π."
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
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com
"My password is the last 8 digits of π."
5:50 p.m.
New subject: [LAU] Re: Languages used for programming music
On Friday, December 26th, 2025 at 19:39, david <gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com> wrote:
I've considered finding various ways to combine
pi, e (natural logarithm) and other irrational mathematical numbers into music. Right now,
it's all manual. But if it could be done programmatically, it might be more fun. At
least faster.
(...)
Any advice?
If by "combining numbers into music" you mean obtaining symbolic representation
of music (i.e. score that you will give to musicians, MIDI, etc.), Python might be a
low-hanging fruit. There are many modules for all kinds of scientific computing and
visualization, Music21 is made for handling musical structures on any level and can export
to MIDI, MusicXML, Lilypond, and probably other formats. The language is "easy"
to learn and there are tons of resources for learning and growing. You could probably even
do the maths in a spreadsheet of your choice and use Python + Music21 only to convert your
CSV file to a score.
For explorations on the level of sound synthesis or DSP, you'll probably want to look
into SuperCollider, FAUST or CSound, the choice will be hard to make. Nyquist (Lisp
syntax) is part of Audacity, so that might be one possible path.
Postscript (yes, it is a full Turing-complete
language!),
So is PowerPoint :P
Cheers,
Michał
9:32 a.m.
New subject: [LAU] Re: Languages used for programming music
On Wed, 24 Dec 2025 21:12:08 -1000
david <gnome(a)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?
very many years ago there was AMPLE written for the BBC computer Music 500 -
5000 add-on modules. Unfortunately I think it was tied specifically to that
hardware, and has long since disappeared.
--
Will J Godfrey
{apparently no longer an 'elderly', now a 'senior'. Is that promotion?}
https://willgodfrey.bandcamp.com/
http://yoshimi.github.io
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
12:06 p.m.
New subject: [LAU] Re: Languages used for programming music
Will Godfrey <willgodfrey(a)musically.me.uk> writes:
very many years ago there was AMPLE written for the
BBC computer Music
500 - 5000 add-on modules. Unfortunately I think it was tied
specifically to that hardware, and has long since disappeared.
AMPLE and the other Music 500 software is very usable in emulation -
most of the decent BBC emulators (B-Em, BeebEm, MAME) have an
implementation of the Music 500 hardware.
It's a clever design, a microcoded wavetable synth built with very
minimal hardware using a logarithmic sample representation:
http://www.colinfraser.com/m5000/m5-eti.htm
From a more modern perspective, it's a pity that it doesn't have filters
and the wavetables are very small, but the large number of channels and
support for stereo panning can make for some pretty impressive results
in the hands of a skilled user...
--
Adam Sampson <ats(a)offog.org> <http://offog.org/>
10 Jan
10 Jan
10:02 p.m.
On 12/24/25 23:12, david 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
...
Which ones have you used, if any?
Hmm..... quite a bit of CLM and Common Music (under Common Lisp and
latter S7 Scheme - thanks Bill, Rick!), sometimes inside SND. For all
interactive stuff SuperCollider, augmented by supernova which is the
synthesis server that is multi-core aware. A while back some interactive
stuff using Objective C + music APIs in the NeXT using a customized
Radio Drum :-) Much much older stuff written in Smalltalk V (writing
some MIDI object oriented environment).
Also some Faust to create SC uGens or small standalone programs, but so
infrequently that every time I tackle another Faust code snippet I have
to re-learn it, ha ha :-)
-- Fernando
11
days inactive
27
days old
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8 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Adam Sampson -
Christopher Arndt -
david -
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano -
Lorenzo Miniero -
MS lists -
Will Godfrey