[CM] clm4

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Michael Gogins wrote:
> If you want to work with a C compiler, you could consider using the sfront compiler which compiles the MPEG-4 Structured Audio Orchestra Language code (a nicer syntax for a Csound like synthesizer) into C, which is then compiled to an executable program. I once had a VST instrument plugin that shelled out to run the SAOL compiler which I had modified to generate a shared library that my plugin then loaded and dispatched events to. This all worked fine and the 2 compile steps (SAOL code to C, C to shared library) did not take that long. Most "orchestras" are not that long and you end up with one long C compilation unit that is clean ANSI C that also does not take long to compile.
> 
> The sfront compiler is reasonably mature and seems to work well. 
> 
> Probably not that hard to make in Lisp a SAOL compiler, or a translator.
> 
> Who knows?
> 
> Regards,
> Mike

Apparently you and I are the only two computer musicians left in the 
world that remember sfront. :) I was a *huge* fan of it, mostly because 
SAOL orchestras are much easier to read and write than the CSound 
equivalents. But as far as I can tell, there was a burst of energy in 
the early 2000s on SAOL and sfront, but no follow-through. Most of the 
SAOL web sites have either disappeared entirely or have not been updated 
in a long time.

So ... it was a nice dream, but I'm currently doing what I should have 
done years ago -- buckling down and learning CSound (5). There are 
thousands of CSound instruments available, and my guess is that there 
are less than a few dozen for SAOL.

Then again, there are quite a few people doing computer music in Matlab. 
You can even get the basics (additive synthesis and basic 
frequency-domain operations) in R.