[HN Gopher] Overtone is live programmable music and visualization
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       Overtone is live programmable music and visualization
        
       Author : jakewins
       Score  : 193 points
       Date   : 2022-03-21 09:52 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (overtone.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (overtone.github.io)
        
       | markoutso wrote:
       | This was superseded by Sonic Pi https://sonic-pi.net/.
       | 
       | The author has said that if he would do it in Erlang if he was
       | starting again now.
       | 
       | Here's a talk with him and the late Joe Armstrong.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SUdnOUKGmo
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | david_allison wrote:
         | One of my favourite talks has a demonstration of FizzBuzz in
         | Sonic Pi. It still blows me away
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U - whole talk is
         | worth a watch
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U#t=42m25s -
         | timestamp
        
       | dgb23 wrote:
       | Here's a great strangeloop talk using Overtone and Clojure/REPL:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-ZUN4rmbKI
        
       | javajosh wrote:
       | "The Overtone window" is the application window and also
       | describes how well the software is accepted over time.
        
       | radarsat1 wrote:
       | There seem to be a lot of "music programming language" posts all
       | of a sudden on HackerNews, many of which, like this one, have
       | existed for years. Not that it's a problem, but I wonder why the
       | sudden interest.
        
         | chaosprint wrote:
         | Probably because last week was the Algorave 10th birthday, an
         | iconic event for music live coding, and we had a 24-hour
         | performance stream:
         | 
         | https://ten.algorave.com/
         | 
         | So here's the language (yet another) I used for the
         | performance:
         | 
         | Glicol: Graph-oriented live coding language and audio DSP
         | library written in Rust for making music in browsers
         | 
         | website:
         | 
         | https://glicol.org
         | 
         | repo:
         | 
         | https://github.com/chaosprint/glicol
        
           | MikeTheGreat wrote:
           | I'm looking at https://ten.algorave.com/ and it looks like a
           | web page for a live stream (so, just like you said :) ).
           | 
           | Obviously, the live stream for last week is no longer live.
           | 
           | Is there a recording of it somewhere?
        
             | chaosprint wrote:
             | Perhaps wait for the update on: https://www.youtube.com/cha
             | nnel/UC_N48pxd05dX53_8vov8zqA/pla...
        
           | bradrn wrote:
           | Wow, glicol looks amazing! One of the few music languages
           | I've seen which actually tries to balance low-level synthesis
           | with higher-level sequencing. (The only other one I know of
           | is extempore: https://extemporelang.github.io/)
        
             | eggy wrote:
             | I use Extempore[0], but I have played with Haskell-based
             | Euterpea[1] too. I bought the book by Paul Hudak and Donya
             | Quick, "The Haskell School of Music". Common Music has
             | Grace, an all-in-one, Lisp-based, cross-platform GUI [2].
             | They all have signal and note level music capabilities.
             | That means you can synthesize sounds from scratch and also
             | code at the higher level with notes and scores. Sonic Pi
             | uses Supercollider as a server.
             | 
             | [0] https://extemporelang.github.io/ [1]
             | https://www.euterpea.com/euterpea/ [2]
             | http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/
        
               | iainctduncan wrote:
               | My projects, Scheme For Max and Scheme for Pure Data, use
               | the same Scheme as Common Music (s7 Scheme) so you can
               | use it to run Common Music code in Max or Pd. Taube's
               | book "Notes from the Metalevel" on Common Music is really
               | great, though sadly, now out of print.
               | 
               | I've played with a lot of languages for music, including
               | the ones you mention, and for my tastes, Scheme is the
               | loveliest. Eventually I plan to play more with Extempore
               | too.
        
         | bhaak wrote:
         | There was a link to Lilypond a few days ago:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30625450
         | 
         | It was titled '"Compiling" Music' and some commentators took it
         | not in the TeX way but in music being created programmatically.
        
       | iainctduncan wrote:
       | Hi, if you're interested in Overtone, you might be interested in
       | my projects as well, Scheme for Max and Scheme for Pure Data.
       | They use s7 Scheme, a very clojurish Scheme implementation
       | designed for computer music needs by Bill Schottstaedt at CCRMA,
       | of Common Lisp Music fame. Part of my motivation for creating it
       | was to overcome some of what I perceived as limitations in
       | options such as Overtone and Pink.
       | https://github.com/iainctduncan/scheme-for-max
       | 
       | Unfortunately Overtone is not really active anymore, the its
       | replacement loses the lisp!
       | 
       | Other interesting Scheme/Lisp based systems in similar areas are
       | Extempore (formerly impromptu), Nyquist (by Dannenburg, another
       | godfather of the field), and Common Music.
        
       | bsedlm wrote:
       | Another interesting tool in this space is called Tidal Cycles
       | http://tidalcycles.org/
       | 
       | It's written in Haskell, and seems to do something very
       | interesting with the way to define looping patterns.
        
       | timdiggerm wrote:
       | The website header makes it look like this is called Covertone
        
         | itazula wrote:
         | I thought so too, then thought perhaps it was a nod to Clojure.
        
       | vmsp wrote:
       | On this theme, there's also Opusmodus which is written in Common-
       | Lisp.
       | 
       | https://opusmodus.com/
        
         | JasonFruit wrote:
         | Wasted a fair amount of time on this before realizing it's Mac-
         | only.
        
       | avindroth wrote:
       | +1 to Orca, a similar impressive project
       | 
       | https://100r.co/site/orca.html
        
         | maxime_cb wrote:
         | Also going to plug in NoiseCraft since we're talking about
         | music live coding: https://noisecraft.app/101
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _Emacs Live (2013)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11951628 - June 2016 (43
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Recreating Daft Punk 's Da Funk with Overtone and Leipzig_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446223 - April 2016 (98
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Afterglow - A live-coding lighting controller, built with
       | Clojure and Overtone_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11046695 - Feb 2016 (4
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Clojure and Overtone Driving Minecraft_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9127963 - March 2015 (15
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Overtone - Collaborative Programmable Music with Clojure_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824789 - May 2014 (5
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Collaborative Programmable Music_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818905 - Nov 2013 (18
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Live coding (music) with Emacs Live_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4522336 - Sept 2012 (16
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Programming Music with Overtone_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832499 - April 2012 (25
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Building an iPad interface for Overtone in ClojureScript_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3615022 - Feb 2012 (9
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Overtone_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089010 - Oct
       | 2011 (73 comments)
        
       | beepbooptheory wrote:
       | These things are undoubtedly cool. Pisonic is great, just vanilla
       | supercollider with the JIT things like Pdef are really cool,
       | Orca, as others have mentioned, is simply beautiful and work unto
       | itself.
       | 
       | But with all these "live" programmable music things, I fail to
       | find anything lasting in what they produce as works of music/art,
       | I much prefer to see the software itself, and its potentialities,
       | as the "work" that others continually express with them.
       | 
       | I love making music with computers, but there is so much
       | infrastructure around things needing to be "realtime" and
       | responsive, minimal latency, a million knobs on your controller,
       | abstract grid controllers, high precision encoders (basically
       | anything Monome has done), tons of ways to route and reroute
       | data, all for the purpose of "performing" your toys. All so many
       | things that are not really necessary to create something. Making
       | digital music is so much more rewarding when your are not trying
       | to plan a set to perform them. Thinking about the kinds of things
       | computers can do ahead of time, and not just "just in time,"
       | opens up so much more creativity and ways of thinking about
       | making music. And very importantly (for me), you can save your
       | wallet, and not have to get lost in the dark money pit of buying
       | equipment, or wanting to buy equipment, all the time.
       | 
       | These things definitely have their place and I think they are
       | themselves beautiful, but there is a tension in them that is not
       | really necessary.
       | 
       | If you want to hear some cool things you can make with just some
       | extreme talent, imagination, and MaxMSP, _without_ this emphasis
       | put on being  "performable" and realtime, look to Carl Stone [1].
       | He is just walking circles around everyone else, and really
       | really showing what computers can do in the interest of art,
       | rather than in the interest of being some techno-nerd rockstar.
       | 
       | 1. https://unseenworlds.bandcamp.com/album/stolen-car
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | suyash wrote:
       | Nice to see another creative coding tool built using JDK
       | technologies.
        
       | stevehiehn wrote:
       | I'm really into this project called https://www.bespokesynth.com/
       | Its allows for a hybrid of modular synths + python scripting
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-21 23:01 UTC)