3 ms·

Do you have any opinions on Tidal vs supercollider on its own, or other systems like PD, max/msp?

nutate 3y ago
jarmitage is a legend (in my eyes), so I'm sure he has his own opinions, but TidalCycles (as it is now known) depends on supercollider for both Midi and Sample playback. It communicates to supercollider through the OSC protocol, so it's conceivable supercollider could/can be swapped out for another engine. As is I think the install a bunch of Haskell stuff + install an editor plugin + install supercollider is the largest blocker to getting folks started with tidal. In the pre-tidalcycles era, Tidal played samples (only afaicr) through its own Dirt sample player which was still a separate process, but included with tidal itself. Now it uses SuperDirt which depends on supercollider. Compared to PD and max/msp, Tidal is far more focused on the pattern language and the magic that can come out of that. Any 'programming as programming' has to be done with Haskell and loaded in as its own functions. Puredata and max/msp both are full (graphical) programming environments with their own quirks and special tricks, but in a way a bit more like Supercollider in that they can speak midi and do playback inside their own engines (afaik).
jarmitage 3y ago
Personally I've never been attracted to writing SuperCollider code, especially not in a live context, largely due to its syntax, but also its complexity. So-called 'visual programming languages' I don't find interesting for performance, since they rely on the mouse for program manipulation. For me Tidal's mini-notation is the greatest music sequencing tool of all time, bar none. Every time someone shows me a sequencer I can usually write the Tidal code in my head on the spot, and save $1000s on redundant hardware. It could only be beaten by being turned into a physical instrument, something I've tried to do in the past: https://github.com/jarmitage/Stenophone https://github.com/jarmitage/Stenophone. That being said, even though I'm evidently a big Tidal fan I would still call attention to ICLC and HLCI, where amazingly creative and interesting new systems and approaches are being proposed every year: https://iclc.toplap.org/ https://iclc.toplap.org/ https://hybrid-livecode.pubpub.org/ https://hybrid-livecode.pubpub.org/

jarmitage is a legend (in my eyes), so I'm sure he has his own opinions, but TidalCycles (as it is now known) depends on supercollider for both Midi and Sample playback. It communicates to supercollider through the OSC protocol, so it's conceivable supercollider could/can be swapped out for another engine. As is I think the install a bunch of Haskell stuff + install an editor plugin + install supercollider is the largest blocker to getting folks started with tidal. In the pre-tidalcycles era, Tidal played samples (only afaicr) through its own Dirt sample player which was still a separate process, but included with tidal itself. Now it uses SuperDirt which depends on supercollider. Compared to PD and max/msp, Tidal is far more focused on the pattern language and the magic that can come out of that. Any 'programming as programming' has to be done with Haskell and loaded in as its own functions. Puredata and max/msp both are full (graphical) programming environments with their own quirks and special tricks, but in a way a bit more like Supercollider in that they can speak midi and do playback inside their own engines (afaik).

jarmitage 3y ago

Personally I've never been attracted to writing SuperCollider code, especially not in a live context, largely due to its syntax, but also its complexity. So-called 'visual programming languages' I don't find interesting for performance, since they rely on the mouse for program manipulation. For me Tidal's mini-notation is the greatest music sequencing tool of all time, bar none. Every time someone shows me a sequencer I can usually write the Tidal code in my head on the spot, and save $1000s on redundant hardware. It could only be beaten by being turned into a physical instrument, something I've tried to do in the past: https://github.com/jarmitage/Stenophone https://github.com/jarmitage/Stenophone. That being said, even though I'm evidently a big Tidal fan I would still call attention to ICLC and HLCI, where amazingly creative and interesting new systems and approaches are being proposed every year: https://iclc.toplap.org/ https://iclc.toplap.org/ https://hybrid-livecode.pubpub.org/ https://hybrid-livecode.pubpub.org/