16. Interface and application programming#

group assignment: compare as many tool options as possible

Sonic Pi#

Sonic Pi is a code-based music creation and performance tool. The reason why it is called ‘Live coding’ is, you can change the code while playing the music without stop music. If you press [Run] again during playback, the changed chord will be applied without stopping the music playback.

After installing the mac version, we tried it in reference to the Tips.

MIDI notes and music notes

C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4
60 62 64 65 67 69 71

Chord example 

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live_loop :flibble do
  play 60
  play 64
  play 67
  sleep 0.5
end

The chord is same as below

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live_loop :flibble do
  play :C4
  play :E4
  play :G4
  sleep 0.5
end

To create music with pre-recorded samples, add the name of sample as follows.

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live_loop :flibble do
 sample :bd_haus, rate: 1
 sleep 0.5
end

We explored how to communicate with application such as Processing With reference to the site. Sonic Pi can communicate with other application with simple protocol called OSC - Open Sound Control. Processing application sends note and decay via IP:127.0.0.1/Port:4559 according to the mouse click position, and Sonic Pi plays piano with the node and the decay. ‘/trigger/synth’ is the data label and note (=’a’ in SonicPi) and decay (=’b’ in Sonic Pi )are arguments.

Sonic Pi code

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live_loop :trigger do
  use_real_time
  a, b, c = sync "/osc/trigger/synth"
  synth :piano, note: a, pan: b, sustain: c
end

Processing code It is necessary to import oscP5 library in davance.

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import oscP5.*;
import netP5.*;
OscP5 oscP5;
NetAddress nAdd;

void setup() {
  size(480, 320);
  frameRate(60);
  oscP5 = new OscP5(this, 12000);
  nAdd = new NetAddress("127.0.0.1", 4559);
}

void draw() {
  background(0);
  if (mousePressed) {
    ellipse(mouseX, mouseY, 40, 40);
  }
}

void mouseReleased() {
  float note = map(mouseX, 0, width, 20, 120);
  float decay = map(mouseY, 0, height, 0, 5);

  OscMessage msg = new OscMessage("/trigger/synth");
  msg.add(note);
  msg.add(decay);
  oscP5.send(msg, nAdd);
  println(msg);
}