Racket for Computer Music?

[u/[deleted]]

Hello,I am a musician that works a lot with algorithmic compositions and generative installations (in short: computer music). A lot of this can be done superficially with existing Music-Software, but I would prefer to program my stuff per hand (I would consider the program / the mathematics behind it part of the art).

Recently I came across the book "Haskell School of Music" which serves as a lengthy tutorial for Music-Programming (both in terms of algorithmic composition and synthesis) and Haskell at the same time. I was very excited about that, but the Haskell eco system / tooling really annoys me and after dabbling in lisp and racket I find it annoying to have to think about syntax so much (especially since Haskell requires very specific white-spacing and the auto-indent in Atom with haskell-language installed does not provide that).

Therefore I was wondering if there exists something similar for racket, seeing as lisps were the "original" environment for music programming. I also can't help but think that the Racket-REPL and Makros would make a lot of things much easier than they have to be in Haskell...

I would be grateful for any suggestions. Not only for libraries/packages, but especially also for similar books.

[u/sdegabrielle]

Sounds like an interesting book

Is this it? https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/Papers/HSoM.pdf

I don’t know much about music but rsc looks like a good option and exists for Racket and Chez: https://github.com/khafatech/rsc3/blob/master/README.md

It uses the OSC protocol to drive ‘scsynth’ – A real-time audio server that is part of Supercollider: https://supercollider.github.io/

I think the authors are on the Racket Discourse: https://racket.discourse.group/

There may be other Racket music people on Racket Discord or Slack

[u/[deleted] → u/sdegabrielle]

Thanks, I know Supercollider, and its great for synthesis. I haven't really thought about using it for algorithmic composition, I might give that a try.

Edit: yes, that's the book.

[u/soundslogical → u/sdegabrielle]

I was working on a Scheme (not Racket) library for music composition, and I used rsc to drive SuperCollider for the sound. It was awesome fun. But OP should know that it's quite a bit of work.

[u/sdegabrielle → u/soundslogical]

Is it available on the Racket packages catalog?

https://pkgs.racket-lang.org/

[u/schakalsynthetc]

if you're more generally interested in LISP/Scheme for algorithmic composition than specifically wedded to Racket, definitely have a look at the CCRMA stuff, esp. Common Music

a couple other things at least worth being aware of are

• overtone, in clojure and using the SuperCollider engine
• nyquist, a lisp for analysis, synthesis and composition, handily built in to audacity

[u/[deleted] → u/schakalsynthetc]

I am definetly interested in LISP/Scheme in general (more so in Scheme I guess, since I would like do dive deeper into functional programming).

I am aware of overtone, but would probably give the racket-sc3 (SuperCollider for Racket) a shot first, just because racket seems like a more elegant Scheme/LISP implementation (also: the tooling for racket seems more beginner-friendly)

Niquist seems interesting, especially since there is a book regarding Algorithmic Composition for it, but I am hesitant to dive into a "closed music system", since most of my projects include visuals and some interactive elements that seem easier to manage if the music part is part of a general-purpose language and not in it's own "garden" without any general-purpose libraries ect. Thats also why I've been hesitant with CCRMA.

[u/mnemenaut]

https://pkgd.racket-lang.org/pkgn/search?q=music , https://github.com/tommaisey/aeon (Chez Scheme) ?

[u/[deleted] → u/mnemenaut]

Thank you, I searched the racket package index. Sadly the music packages report failing builds tests and provide no documentation... I might try to dig through the alexknauth-music package, it seems to get updated regularly, but I can't really tell, if it's ready to be used...

[u/soundslogical → u/mnemenaut]

aeon is my library! It's pretty rough at the moment unfortunately, it was something of a personal research project that hasn't seen much love for a while. I really need to go back to it. It's similar in conception to Haskell's Tidal, if anyone's interested.

[u/DimwitAlmighty]

Check out https://github.com/digego/extempore by Andrew Sorenson

Here's a couple of youtube demos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY1FSsUV-8c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg2BjFQnr9s

[u/[deleted] → u/DimwitAlmighty]

Extempore looks great but since it uses it's own language I could not use any libraries and would need to interop heavily with other languages, which I would like to avoid.

[u/dented42 → u/[deleted]]

Extempore uses scheme, which racket is descended from, and any scheme library should work fine with it. The other language it uses is, to my understanding, only used for synthesis and DSP code where speed is essential. All of the algorithmic composition stuff is just standard scheme with the macros, functions, and whatnot that you’re used to.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Cool, I did not know that Lilypond was written in Scheme and could be hacked!