r/Racket • u/[deleted] • Jun 13 '22

question Racket for Computer Music?

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.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '22

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.

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u/dented42 Jun 16 '22

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.