Languages for Computer Music

Specialized languages for computer music have long been an important area of research in this community. Computer music languages have enabled composers who are not software engineers to nevertheless use computers effectively. While powerful general-purpose programming languages can be used for music tasks, experience has shown that time plays a special role in music computation, and languages that embrace musical time are especially expressive for many musical tasks. Time is expressed in procedural languages through schedulers and abstractions of beats, duration and tempo. Functional languages have been extended with temporal semantics, and object-oriented languages are often used to model stream-based computation of audio. This article considers models of computation that are especially important for music programming, how these models are supported in programming languages, and how this leads to expressive and efficient programs. Concrete examples are drawn from some of the most widely used music programming languages

Regular expressions as violin bowing patterns

String players spend a significant amount of practice time creating and learning bowings. These may be indicated in the music using up-bow and down-bow symbols, but those traditional notations do not capture the complex bowing patterns that are latent within the music. Regular expressions, a mathematical notation for a simple class of formal languages, can describe precisely the bowing patterns that commonly arise in string music. A software tool based on regular expressions enables performers to search for passages that can be handled with similar bowings, and to edit them consistently. A computer-based music editor incorporating bowing patterns has been implemented, using Lilypond to typeset the music. Our approach has been evaluated by using the editor to study ten movements from six violin sonatas by W. A. Mozart. Our experience shows that the editor is successful at finding passages and inserting bowings; that relatively complex patterns occur a number of times; and that the bowings can be inserted automatically and consistently

A System for the generation of tonal music based on transformations

Most if not all of the approaches being used in the computer study of natural languages also have been applied to the computer study of music. Music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1867 - 1935) developed a system for the study of tonal music that is compatible with the transformational grammars defined by linguist Noam Chomsky for the study of natural languages. Steven Smoliar ( 1980 ) defined transformations, based on Schenker’s theory, for the analysis of musical compositions. This study provides background into the application of grammars in the generation of musical compositions and a full implementation of the transformations defined by Smoliar. The implementation is in C, and the transformations can be performed interactively in an interpreted mode or incorporated into any C language program

Creating Digital Musical Instruments with libmosaic-sound and Mosaicode

Music has been influenced by digital technology over the last few decades. With the computer and the Digital Musical Instruments, the musical composition could trespass the use of acoustic instruments demanding to musicians and composers a sort of computer programming skills for the development of musical applications. In order to simplify the development of musical applications several tools and musical programming languages arose bringing some facilities to lay-musicians on computer programming to use the computer to make music. This work presents the development of a Visual Programming Language (VPL) to develop DMI applications in the Mosaicode programming environment, simplifying sound design and making the creation of digital instruments more accessible to digital artists. It is also presented the implementation of libmosaic-sound library, which supported the VPL development, for the specific domain of Music Computing and DMI creation

Idiomatic Patterns and Aesthetic Influence in Computer Music Languages

It is widely accepted that acoustic and digital musical instruments shape the cognitive processes of the performer on both embodied and conceptual levels, ultimately influencing the structure and aesthetics of the resulting performance. In this article we examine the ways in which computer music languages might similarly influence the aesthetic decisions of the digital music practitioner, even when those languages are designed for generality and theoretically capable of implementing any sound-producing process. We examine the basis for querying the non-neutrality of tools with a particular focus on the concept of idiomaticity: patterns of instruments or languages which are particularly easy or natural to execute in comparison to others. We then present correspondence with the developers of several major music programming languages and a survey of digital musical instrument creators examining the relationship between idiomatic patterns of the language and the characteristics of the resulting instruments and pieces. In an open-ended creative domain, asserting causal relationships is difficult and potentially inappropriate, but we find a complex interplay between language, instrument, piece and performance that suggests that the creator of the music programming language should be considered one party to a creative conversation that occurs each time a new instrument is designed.Peer reviewe

The Update, March 2015

Inside this issue: -- UNI & the Arts: Department of Art Faculty Engage Students at Waterloo East High School-- Department News-- School of Music Events-- UNI Wins Big at AAF: UNI Department of Art Students Bring Home the Gold-- Alumni Spotlight: Department of Philosophy and World Religions: Rick Grisel-- Alumni Spotlight: Department of Theatre: Michaela Nelson-- Student Spotlight: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry: Angela Weepie-- Mesa Española, Department of Languages and Literatures-- Student Spotlight: Department of Theatre: Cory Skold-- Student Spotlight: Department of Computer Science: Mojtaba Alfardan-- Physics Club, Department of Physics-- UNI Student Travels to Austria: School of Music Student Emily Bicknese for Music-- All the CHAS that\u27s Fit to Print: March 2015 Eventshttps://scholarworks.uni.edu/chasnews/1026/thumbnail.jp

Confessions of a live coder

This paper describes the process involved when a live coder decides to learn a new musical programming language of another paradigm. The paper introduces the problems of running comparative experiments, or user studies, within the field of live coding. It suggests that an autoethnographic account of the process can be helpful for understanding the technological conditioning of contemporary musical tools. The author is conducting a larger research project on this theme: the part presented in this paper describes the adoption of a new musical programming environment, Impromptu, and how this affects the author’s musical practice