Excerpt from the Article...
The packages I'll describe are systems that bind together a set of tools that typically include a language component, some form of graphic I/O, and a compiler for a broad variety of output targets. These systems impose no particular rules regarding the composer's use of either the system itself or its generated data. Whole compositions may be produced through algorithmic means, or a system may be used to generate a series of variations on a single phrase within an otherwise strictly deterministic piece. The software obeys the plan of the algorithm(s) employed, produces the results of its calculations, and hands those results to the composer. The composer obeys the demands of the creative impulse and remains free to dispense of the generated material as he or she prefers.
In this article I'll review Professor Heinrich Taube's Grace. Following articles will profile Michael Gogins' CsoundAC and Christopher Ariza's athenaCL. Each system has its unique characteristics, and each one is a valuable addition to the algorithmic composer's software armory.
Grace
Common Music/Grace is a software system designed to assist composers working in music styles that employ chance, random, fractal, and other stochastic methods of generating values for their musical materials. Common Music is a music programming language that includes a variety of functions and routines particularly important to algorithmic composition. Grace is the Graphic Realtime Algorithmic Composition Environment, a JUCE-based GUI for Common Music that includes code editors for the Sal and Scheme language dialects, a set of predefined instruments, an interactive plotter with playback and various display options, a variety of output targets, and access to the host system's audio and MIDI I/O services. Common Music is transparently integrated into the Grace system so throughout the remainder of this article I will refer simply to Grace, with the same case as shown in the GUI splash screen.
Read more...http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/algorithmic-music-composition-linux-part-1
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