[CM] slippery chicken release

[Torsten Anders]

Dear Michael and others,

Let me assure you that I understand your position. After all, I have been clearly focussed myself on working with and developing text-based programming systems for > 10 years (including CM, SuperCollider, and for ~ 10 year now developing Strasheela). I certainly do not want to use a patching language myself for writing any program that is only slightly more complex. 

On the other hand, I assume you will agree that certain information including musical information such as chord, scales, rhythms, pitch sequences, motifs, etc. are far more easy to read in a graphic representation (i.e. common music notation) than in a textual format. If you generate all such information algorithmically, and only want to read but never edit such information, then a purely textual programming system with some music notation output (e.g., via Lilypond) is certainly fine. 

However, I think it is highly useful to integrate manual and machine composition, e.g., by specifying certain motifs or harmonies manually, but then arrange them algorithmically (or vice versa). This can of course be done textually (and all of us here are likely doing that all the time). However, I would really like to see and edit, e.g., my motif definitions in common music notation (I guess you know from experience what I am talking about :). I am therefore now seriously considering to integrate my system Strasheela into OpenMusic / PWGL so that I can use its score editors etc. (even though it is not even defined in Lisp). I will still do my actually programming with a textual language, but I think for using the resulting programs a graphical user interface can be beneficial. Besides, the system (or at least some of its applications) may become useful for others.

Best wishes,
Torsten

On 26 May 2012, at 11:02, Michael Edwards wrote:

> Hi Torsten,
> 
>> PS: Also, you are saying clearly that you do not plan an graphical user interface for this software. Nevertheless, likely it would be relatively easy to turn your whole software into a library for PWGL or OpenMusic.
> 
> That's an interesting proposition.  Certainly some people might find
> having a popup window with object properties useful.  And for sure,
> some of the graphical editors in those packages are great.  I remain
> sceptical myself however--I just find programming directly, in a text
> editor, to be the most effective and efficient way of working.  I
> realise that I'm in the minority there though.
> 
>> If you still have some resources left from your AHRC grant then doing so could greatly strengthen your impact (good for your REF and may even be helpful for the next grant application).
> 
> God forbid that we actually let our research decisions be so heavily
> influenced by government concepts of 'impact'....
> 
> 
>> For a more advanced used of such features you would need to have a conversation of your music representation (your slippery chicken object) into the OpenMusic / PWGL music representation. You already did something similar when defining your Lilypond interface (likely you are using Fomus, which makes this interface much more simple to define), so you know that such score format conversation is not defined on a single day, but is not too complex either.
> 
> I'm not using Fomus actually.  I decided it would be easier (!?) to
> write my own interface to Lilypond.  It turned out to be only a couple
> of days work actually.
> 
>> Anyway, you are probably still not interested :)
> 
> Ach, no, interested for sure.  But still on the fence :)
> 
> Cheers, Michael
> 
> 
>> 
>> On 24 May 2012, at 19:04, Michael Edwards wrote:
>>> It is with great pleasure that I announce the open-source release of my
>>> algorithmic composition software "slippery chicken":
>>> http://www.michael-edwards.org/sc/
>>> 
>>> Please feel free to re-post to any potentially interested colleagues, students
>>> or mailing lists.
>>> 
>>> Workshops introducing the software will be held in Edinburgh, UK, and
>>> Karlsruhe, Germany, in July 2012:
>>> http://www.michael-edwards.org/sc/workshops.html
>>> 
>>> "slippery chicken" is an open-source algorithmic composition system written in
>>> Common Lisp which enables a top-down approach to music composition. The
>>> software was originally tailor-made to encapsulate the author's personal
>>> composition techniques, however many general-purpose algorithmic composition
>>> tools have been programmed that should be useful to a range of composers. The
>>> main goal of the project is to facilitate a melding of electronic and
>>> instrumental sound worlds, not just at the sonic but also at the structural
>>> level. Pure instrumental or electronic composition is of course possible with
>>> the system too. Techniques for the innovative combination of rhythm and pitch
>>> data--arguably one of the most difficult aspects of making convincing musical
>>> algorithms--are offered.
>>> 
>>> Anyone interested in discussing the software is encouraged to join the Google
>>> Group http://groups.google.com/group/slippery-chicken
>>> 
>>> Best wishes,
>>> 
>>>        Michael Edwards
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ___________________________________________
>>> 
>>> michael edwards
>>> 
>>> office : (+44) (0)131 650 2431
>>> mobile : (+44) (0)7952 153750
>>> 
>>> michael.edwards at ed.ac.uk
>>> 
>>> MSc in Digital Composition and Performance
>>>     http://michael-edwards.org/dcp
>>> University of Edinburgh
>>>     http://michael-edwards.org/uofe
>>> Personal homepage
>>>     http://www.michael-edwards.org
>>> ___________________________________________
>> 
>>