ChucK ensemble ?

[jukka_k]

Hi,

Anyone interested of starting a ChucK ensemble, not (necessarily) livecoding but collaborative compositions using exclusively ChucK ?
I've outlined a proposal for a program or 'rules' under discussion if (at least) few people are interested.


-Jukka

[cebec]

Absolutely great idea! I'm in...

[.dupion.]

sounds good to me!

p.s. i probably should mention that i'm a complete beginner. maybe i could play the ChucK equivalent of the triangle or something?
p.p.s. don't feel obliged to accomodate me if its not in fitting with your idea

[witt0191]

me to sounds like a great idea

[jukka_k]

Great, at least a quartet ! Here is a program or 'rules' I've outlined,
let me know what you think:

[kijjaz]

This is a nice rule for building compositions and ideas for the band ^_^
From that, we can extend more into many areas.
I'm in also.

Let's make up some more rules to give example ideas for compositions.

[cebec]

Sounds good (the rules) but how would we start and then handle the collection of code? Would everyone write a small ChucK program on their own and then submit it at a specified time, etc.?

[jukka_k]

Great kijjaz, yes let's start with these, we can add more rules when/if needed.

Here's a small template:

[kijjaz]

Ohh.. so the codes are gonna be played simultaneously?
It must be cool to incoporate codes by many chuckers into one chuck file.
but there should also be a system to sync / make the codes interact..

this would depend on each composition.

for example, we can set up a center system that each member's code can sync with / obtain information.

there can also be arrays that contain messages,
especially for interaction between each system.
- - -

some example ideas:

we might define a Metronome class that the codes can access.
so we can easily sync all the patches.

sequencer array:
make a universal int seq[][];
that each member can add members to it to form sequences.
so i can do like...

seq.size() => int MyMelody1;
seq << [0, 1, 1, 0]; // add my new melody
// .. etc ..
seq[MyMelody1] << 2 << 0 << 0; // add more members to that melody.
- - -

but this will need more planning.

[Kassen]

[jukka_k]

Yes, UGen codes simultanously and any source codes (complete programs)
too if we want. My original idea was to avoid synchronizing UGens ("manually") , that's why rule 4. (all music is monophonic), I thought that each UGen would be built independently to others, the whole would be a kind of non-deterministic automaton which would run using Chuck's timing mechanism and let Chuck automatically take care of synchronizing the files (if we use multiply source files). UGen's would be dependent of each others only if coder wants it but he/she must figure out how to do it. But of course this was just what I thought first, we can change and add rules/features as much we want.


-Jukka

[Kassen]

[cebec]

Yes, I had the feeling you meant 'shred', too.

[Inventor]

I'm in though I would like to have a more clearly defined code structure before going any further. I think that chaining UGens together as described in the original post was a good vague concept to get us started, but it won't work quite like that as Kassen points out. Let's set up something like the code snippet that Kassen wrote before we all go off and write incompatible code.

I could code one of my personal favorites, a Boolean Sequencer class. It might perhaps receive an event that says "one metronome note interval has passed" and then respond with an event that says "play a note" or "the frequency of the note is this".

Or I could call upon history and recode some favorites of the past, like Kijjaz's birds (I could give you the bird) or perhaps my motorcycle sound (bwaaaa whaaaa).

It might be good to have an enable/disable feature in the control section of the code so that something like a motorcycle only occurs at the beginning or end of the song, i.e. some master sequencing occurs rather than just chaos with no structure.

Also, what is this I keep seeing about "public class" whatever code? Is this new in the latest version of ChucK. I'm ashamed to say I didn't upgrade because I never use command line, only mini-audicle. Also, did mini-audicle ever get released with the new version of ChucK? If we're going to work together we need to all have the latest and greatest.

Great idea for building community! I'm in!

[cebec]

[jukka_k]

OK, now I'm explaining this badly, I try this with (pseudo)code examples.
There's a game (at least here in Finland), you take a letter size paper or A4 in Europe, fold it to three parts. First player draws a head to first part of the paper and continues part of the neck to second part of the paper, next player draws a torso making lines to continue to third part and last player makes legs. As a result there's a human figure drawn by three people, usually funny (at least our kids liked the play). Same thing here, let's start patch like this:

[Kassen]

[Kassen]

Jukka; got it! Thanks for clarifying.

One more note; "dac" is really quite limited in what you can do with it. Assuming you aren't allowed to re-/ dis- connect UGens then dac will only allow you to modulate it's .gain(). I suppose that may be interesting but all normal UGens allow that as well so...

[jukka_k]

Great Kassen, this is just my poor explaining, especially when I'm enthusiastic, this doesn't happen first time in my life . Yes dac is limited, that's why he will get timing (and/or something else, it depends what we decide). We may re-/disconnect any UGen's, I can't see any reason why not.
Maybe starting from something simple is good first, things usually gets more complicated later.


-Jukka

[Kassen]

Cool, I like this game idea.

[Inventor]

Here in the US, at least when I was in college, we'd write "cycle stories", great fun! First person gets small electric typewriter (tool of the 80's) and types in a few sentences as the beginning of the story, pass it around and each player types whatever they feel like. Gets really funny as the night and the drinking go on...

I'm in for cycle ChucK. I did think, however, based on the thread title that you meant we would make a song with each of us contributing an instrument or somesuch. I suppose in Cycle ChucK we would have to add lots of silly comments to make it funny as well. We could just post the code to this thread instead of emailing it, perhaps?

Kassen, thanks for the public / static tutorial. I don't quite get it yet but it will sink in with time. I get that you make a class and then the machine sets aside these static variables for it, then every instance of the class accesses the same shared variables, so it facilitates inter-shred communication. It just hasn't become intuitive yet and I'm one who is dazed and confused for a while until he gets it, then i'm good to go. So let it percolate.

Let's give Cycle ChucK a try!

[Kassen]

Les (re;Class),

Yes, that's basically right. Most of this (and a bit more) is covered in the manual as well, I think.

Note that when we are referring to a static member there is no need to instantiate the class as static members aren't unique to instances and instead belong to the class itself. This is why I didn't capitalise "clock" above. I didn't plan on ever having a shred go;

[Inventor]

thank you Kassen, you are helpful and pleasant as always.

Enough Talk! Time to ChucK this one! I begin with a simple woo-woo sound and some comments to facilitate my preferred code structure. You may of course, ChucK that and do whatever you want! Here's the code:

---

Cycle_ChucK1.ck
Description:	Starting with a bang! Well, a woo-woo anyway.	Download (listen)
Filename:	Cycle_ChucK1.ck
Filesize:	377 Bytes
Downloaded:	259 Time(s)

---

[cebec]

ok, how do we determine the order of the participants, though? 5 of us could be working on the same initial code simultaneously...

[jukka_k]

How about this:

http://notebook.zoho.com


username: chuckensemble
password: chen88

There's Cycle #1 which I just wrote, mark your name to code,
I took Pan2, anyway don't show your code, who takes SinOsc,
just tell to JCRev when you're ready and tell too which parameters
you used, JCRev to Pan2 (me), me to dac-person, after we all are ready just fill your code and first is done.

Hope this works, let me know.


-Jukka