fadden@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Andy McFadden) (04/15/90)
This is the abstract from a seminar I recently helped put on: ----- Real-Time Languages and Operating Systems for Computer Music Professor David Anderson UCB CS Department ABSTRACT -------- Current musical synthesizers are equipped with MIDI interfaces, allowing them to be controlled by a computer. Musical input devices such as keyboards can likewise act as input devices for computers. This creates an exciting new range of musical possibilities in which the computer acts as an ``intelligent instrument'', an accompanist, a partner in improvisation, or an autonomous performer of algorithmically-generated music. Such applications typically have two major characteristics: strict timing constraints, and a high degree of logical parallelism. Unfortunately, common programming languages and operating systems fail to provide the appropriate facilities. It is necessary to design new languages and corresponding scheduling systems to support the needs of computer music. This seminar will discuss the approaches that have been taken to deal with these problems, and will describe a language system developed by Prof. Anderson (FORMULA) that is used by many computer musicians. -------- FORMULA stands for FORth MUsic LAnguage, and was originally developed on an Apple II equipped with a Mountain Music card using Applesoft BASIC. He switched to FORTH because Applesoft wasn't suitable for what he wanted to do. He then went to an Atari ST, and just recently a student of his ported it to the Macintosh. FORMULA music files don't look much like music. However, you can control things like volume, tempo, etc within a song, because it is a *language* for describing music, rather than just a pile of notes. This means you can program an interpretation of one of Chopin's piano pieces, instead of just entering the keys hit. The results are truly remarkable, and can take advantage of patterns in the music to generate surprising results from small amounts of code. Question is, does anybody want to try porting this to the Apple //gs? You need to know something about music and //gs programming, and some knowledge of Forth would probably help (but should be easy enough to acquire). Professor Anderson is interested in seeing his program used more widely, and would probably be delighted to hear from anybody seriously interested in porting it (or using it, if you have a Macintosh or an Atari). If you are serious about porting it or using it, send e-mail and I will forward it to him. DISCLAIMER: He didn't ask me to do this. I just think it would be really neat to have it running on a //gs. -- fadden@cory.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden) ..!ucbvax!cory!fadden