4 ms·

Overtone is live programmable music and visualization

217 points by jakewins 5y ago

dgb23 5y ago
Here's a great strangeloop talk using Overtone and Clojure/REPL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-ZUN4rmbKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-ZUN4rmbKI
vmsp 5y ago
On this theme, there's also Opusmodus which is written in Common-Lisp. https://opusmodus.com/ https://opusmodus.com/
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  Wasted a fair amount of time on this before realizing it's Mac-only.
markoutso 5y ago
This was superseded by Sonic Pi https://sonic-pi.net/ https://sonic-pi.net/. The author has said that if he would do it in Erlang if he was starting again now. Here's a talk with him and the late Joe Armstrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SUdnOUKGmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SUdnOUKGmo
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- david_allison 5y ago
  One of my favourite talks has a demonstration of FizzBuzz in Sonic Pi. It still blows me away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U - whole talk is worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U#t=42m25s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U#t=42m25s - timestamp
radarsat1 5y ago
There seem to be a lot of "music programming language" posts all of a sudden on HackerNews, many of which, like this one, have existed for years. Not that it's a problem, but I wonder why the sudden interest.
- bhaak 5y ago
  There was a link to Lilypond a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30625450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30625450 It was titled '"Compiling" Music' and some commentators took it not in the TeX way but in music being created programmatically.
- chaosprint 5y ago
  Probably because last week was the Algorave 10th birthday, an iconic event for music live coding, and we had a 24-hour performance stream: https://ten.algorave.com/ https://ten.algorave.com/ So here's the language (yet another) I used for the performance: Glicol: Graph-oriented live coding language and audio DSP library written in Rust for making music in browsers website: https://glicol.org https://glicol.org repo: https://github.com/chaosprint/glicol https://github.com/chaosprint/glicol
  - MikeTheGreat 5y ago
    I'm looking at https://ten.algorave.com/ https://ten.algorave.com/ and it looks like a web page for a live stream (so, just like you said :) ). Obviously, the live stream for last week is no longer live. Is there a recording of it somewhere?
    - chaosprint 5y ago
      Perhaps wait for the update on: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_N48pxd05dX53_8vov8zqA/playlists https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_N48pxd05dX53_8vov8zqA/pla...
  - bradrn 5y ago
    Wow, glicol looks amazing! One of the few music languages I’ve seen which actually tries to balance low-level synthesis with higher-level sequencing. (The only other one I know of is extempore: https://extemporelang.github.io/ https://extemporelang.github.io/)
avindroth 5y ago
+1 to Orca, a similar impressive project https://100r.co/site/orca.html https://100r.co/site/orca.html
- maxime_cb 5y ago
  Also going to plug in NoiseCraft since we're talking about music live coding: https://noisecraft.app/101 https://noisecraft.app/101
suyash 5y ago
Nice to see another creative coding tool built using JDK technologies.
timdiggerm 5y ago
The website header makes it look like this is called Covertone
- itazula 5y ago
  I thought so too, then thought perhaps it was a nod to Clojure.
dang 5y ago
Related: Emacs Live (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11951628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11951628 - June 2016 (43 comments) Recreating Daft Punk's Da Funk with Overtone and Leipzig - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446223 - April 2016 (98 comments) Afterglow – A live-coding lighting controller, built with Clojure and Overtone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11046695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11046695 - Feb 2016 (4 comments) Clojure and Overtone Driving Minecraft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9127963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9127963 - March 2015 (15 comments) Overtone – Collaborative Programmable Music with Clojure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824789 - May 2014 (5 comments) Collaborative Programmable Music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818905 - Nov 2013 (18 comments) Live coding (music) with Emacs Live - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4522336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4522336 - Sept 2012 (16 comments) Programming Music with Overtone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832499 - April 2012 (25 comments) Building an iPad interface for Overtone in ClojureScript - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3615022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3615022 - Feb 2012 (9 comments) Overtone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089010 - Oct 2011 (73 comments)
beepbooptheory 5y ago
These things are undoubtedly cool. Pisonic is great, just vanilla supercollider with the JIT things like Pdef are really cool, Orca, as others have mentioned, is simply beautiful and work unto itself. But with all these "live" programmable music things, I fail to find anything lasting in what they produce as works of music/art, I much prefer to see the software itself, and its potentialities, as the "work" that others continually express with them. I love making music with computers, but there is so much infrastructure around things needing to be "realtime" and responsive, minimal latency, a million knobs on your controller, abstract grid controllers, high precision encoders (basically anything Monome has done), tons of ways to route and reroute data, all for the purpose of "performing" your toys. All so many things that are not really necessary to create something. Making digital music is so much more rewarding when your are not trying to plan a set to perform them. Thinking about the kinds of things computers can do ahead of time, and not just "just in time," opens up so much more creativity and ways of thinking about making music. And very importantly (for me), you can save your wallet, and not have to get lost in the dark money pit of buying equipment, or wanting to buy equipment, all the time. These things definitely have their place and I think they are themselves beautiful, but there is a tension in them that is not really necessary. If you want to hear some cool things you can make with just some extreme talent, imagination, and MaxMSP, without this emphasis put on being "performable" and realtime, look to Carl Stone [1]. He is just walking circles around everyone else, and really really showing what computers can do in the interest of art, rather than in the interest of being some techno-nerd rockstar. 1. https://unseenworlds.bandcamp.com/album/stolen-car https://unseenworlds.bandcamp.com/album/stolen-car
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
iainctduncan 5y ago
Hi, if you're interested in Overtone, you might be interested in my projects as well, Scheme for Max and Scheme for Pure Data. They use s7 Scheme, a very clojurish Scheme implementation designed for computer music needs by Bill Schottstaedt at CCRMA, of Common Lisp Music fame. Part of my motivation for creating it was to overcome some of what I perceived as limitations in options such as Overtone and Pink. https://github.com/iainctduncan/scheme-for-max https://github.com/iainctduncan/scheme-for-max Unfortunately Overtone is not really active anymore, the its replacement loses the lisp! Other interesting Scheme/Lisp based systems in similar areas are Extempore (formerly impromptu), Nyquist (by Dannenburg, another godfather of the field), and Common Music.
bsedlm 5y ago
Another interesting tool in this space is called Tidal Cycles http://tidalcycles.org/ http://tidalcycles.org/ It's written in Haskell, and seems to do something very interesting with the way to define looping patterns.
javajosh 5y ago
"The Overtone window" is the application window and also describes how well the software is accepted over time.
stevehiehn 5y ago
I'm really into this project called https://www.bespokesynth.com/ https://www.bespokesynth.com/ Its allows for a hybrid of modular synths + python scripting

217 points by jakewins 5y ago

Here's a great strangeloop talk using Overtone and Clojure/REPL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-ZUN4rmbKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-ZUN4rmbKI

vmsp 5y ago

On this theme, there's also Opusmodus which is written in Common-Lisp. https://opusmodus.com/ https://opusmodus.com/

JasonFruit 5y ago
Wasted a fair amount of time on this before realizing it's Mac-only.

markoutso 5y ago

This was superseded by Sonic Pi https://sonic-pi.net/ https://sonic-pi.net/. The author has said that if he would do it in Erlang if he was starting again now. Here's a talk with him and the late Joe Armstrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SUdnOUKGmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SUdnOUKGmo

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
david_allison 5y ago
One of my favourite talks has a demonstration of FizzBuzz in Sonic Pi. It still blows me away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U - whole talk is worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U#t=42m25s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U#t=42m25s - timestamp

radarsat1 5y ago

There seem to be a lot of "music programming language" posts all of a sudden on HackerNews, many of which, like this one, have existed for years. Not that it's a problem, but I wonder why the sudden interest.

bhaak 5y ago
There was a link to Lilypond a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30625450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30625450 It was titled '"Compiling" Music' and some commentators took it not in the TeX way but in music being created programmatically.
chaosprint 5y ago
Probably because last week was the Algorave 10th birthday, an iconic event for music live coding, and we had a 24-hour performance stream: https://ten.algorave.com/ https://ten.algorave.com/ So here's the language (yet another) I used for the performance: Glicol: Graph-oriented live coding language and audio DSP library written in Rust for making music in browsers website: https://glicol.org https://glicol.org repo: https://github.com/chaosprint/glicol https://github.com/chaosprint/glicol
- MikeTheGreat 5y ago
  I'm looking at https://ten.algorave.com/ https://ten.algorave.com/ and it looks like a web page for a live stream (so, just like you said :) ). Obviously, the live stream for last week is no longer live. Is there a recording of it somewhere?
  - chaosprint 5y ago
    Perhaps wait for the update on: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_N48pxd05dX53_8vov8zqA/playlists https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_N48pxd05dX53_8vov8zqA/pla...
- bradrn 5y ago
  Wow, glicol looks amazing! One of the few music languages I’ve seen which actually tries to balance low-level synthesis with higher-level sequencing. (The only other one I know of is extempore: https://extemporelang.github.io/ https://extemporelang.github.io/)

avindroth 5y ago

+1 to Orca, a similar impressive project https://100r.co/site/orca.html https://100r.co/site/orca.html

maxime_cb 5y ago
Also going to plug in NoiseCraft since we're talking about music live coding: https://noisecraft.app/101 https://noisecraft.app/101

suyash 5y ago

Nice to see another creative coding tool built using JDK technologies.

timdiggerm 5y ago

The website header makes it look like this is called Covertone

itazula 5y ago
I thought so too, then thought perhaps it was a nod to Clojure.

dang 5y ago

Related: Emacs Live (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11951628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11951628 - June 2016 (43 comments) Recreating Daft Punk's Da Funk with Overtone and Leipzig - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446223 - April 2016 (98 comments) Afterglow – A live-coding lighting controller, built with Clojure and Overtone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11046695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11046695 - Feb 2016 (4 comments) Clojure and Overtone Driving Minecraft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9127963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9127963 - March 2015 (15 comments) Overtone – Collaborative Programmable Music with Clojure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824789 - May 2014 (5 comments) Collaborative Programmable Music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818905 - Nov 2013 (18 comments) Live coding (music) with Emacs Live - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4522336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4522336 - Sept 2012 (16 comments) Programming Music with Overtone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832499 - April 2012 (25 comments) Building an iPad interface for Overtone in ClojureScript - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3615022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3615022 - Feb 2012 (9 comments) Overtone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089010 - Oct 2011 (73 comments)

beepbooptheory 5y ago

These things are undoubtedly cool. Pisonic is great, just vanilla supercollider with the JIT things like Pdef are really cool, Orca, as others have mentioned, is simply beautiful and work unto itself. But with all these "live" programmable music things, I fail to find anything lasting in what they produce as works of music/art, I much prefer to see the software itself, and its potentialities, as the "work" that others continually express with them. I love making music with computers, but there is so much infrastructure around things needing to be "realtime" and responsive, minimal latency, a million knobs on your controller, abstract grid controllers, high precision encoders (basically anything Monome has done), tons of ways to route and reroute data, all for the purpose of "performing" your toys. All so many things that are not really necessary to create something. Making digital music is so much more rewarding when your are not trying to plan a set to perform them. Thinking about the kinds of things computers can do ahead of time, and not just "just in time," opens up so much more creativity and ways of thinking about making music. And very importantly (for me), you can save your wallet, and not have to get lost in the dark money pit of buying equipment, or wanting to buy equipment, all the time. These things definitely have their place and I think they are themselves beautiful, but there is a tension in them that is not really necessary. If you want to hear some cool things you can make with just some extreme talent, imagination, and MaxMSP, without this emphasis put on being "performable" and realtime, look to Carl Stone [1]. He is just walking circles around everyone else, and really really showing what computers can do in the interest of art, rather than in the interest of being some techno-nerd rockstar. 1. https://unseenworlds.bandcamp.com/album/stolen-car https://unseenworlds.bandcamp.com/album/stolen-car

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

iainctduncan 5y ago

Hi, if you're interested in Overtone, you might be interested in my projects as well, Scheme for Max and Scheme for Pure Data. They use s7 Scheme, a very clojurish Scheme implementation designed for computer music needs by Bill Schottstaedt at CCRMA, of Common Lisp Music fame. Part of my motivation for creating it was to overcome some of what I perceived as limitations in options such as Overtone and Pink. https://github.com/iainctduncan/scheme-for-max https://github.com/iainctduncan/scheme-for-max Unfortunately Overtone is not really active anymore, the its replacement loses the lisp! Other interesting Scheme/Lisp based systems in similar areas are Extempore (formerly impromptu), Nyquist (by Dannenburg, another godfather of the field), and Common Music.

bsedlm 5y ago

Another interesting tool in this space is called Tidal Cycles http://tidalcycles.org/ http://tidalcycles.org/ It's written in Haskell, and seems to do something very interesting with the way to define looping patterns.

javajosh 5y ago

"The Overtone window" is the application window and also describes how well the software is accepted over time.

stevehiehn 5y ago

I'm really into this project called https://www.bespokesynth.com/ https://www.bespokesynth.com/ Its allows for a hybrid of modular synths + python scripting