Puredata & Supercollider

do you know why i love Axoloti?
because i managed to write quite a number of my own working objects without real C knowledge :grin:

i know my code is ugly AF ā€“ but hey, it does the job.

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Basically my whole back catalogue after 2013 uses Pd somewhere in the background.
But you donā€™t actually hear Pd, just the hardware doing a thing it could not do before.

  • Like the Octatrack automatically repitching a sample proportionally to the master tempo.
  • Or the Blackbox having LFOs before it got them officially.
  • Or a generative sequencer / randomizer for NordDrum2.
  • Two days ago, I made a patch that automates cues, levels and the delay on the 1010 Bluebox in such a way that it can be used as a looper.

Thereā€™s no limit really. I personally donā€™t do audio in Pd, because Iā€™m interested in reliability and portability: all my patches run in Pd Party, an iOS/Android host app for Pd.

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Iā€™ve tried using PDParty but am not sure how to use the GUI objects it requires. So Iā€™ve been using MobMuPlat. Iā€™m kind of new to all this computer stuff.

I love what the nord can do with PD or max msp. Complete chaos. Kind of what I wanna do eventually is be able to make all kinds of different patches.

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I have realized that too. Theyā€™re their own ecosystems. I am very interested in being able to use these programs and just sample them into hardware to use for projects. To have a little more control. Been eyeing up octatracks for some to be my experimental sampler to use with these programs.

MobMuPlat is fantastic! That was my gateway to using Pd on iOS.
I even sent the developer $10 years ago because itā€™s so good.

Itā€™s much quicker to create GUIs on MMP than optimizing a Vanilla Pd GUI for PdParty.
PdParty is barebones, but pretty reliable.

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I play with Pure Data and am currently fiddling with Faust too https://faustide.grame.fr/ Some of the demo Faust patches are pretty cool and run on one line of code - though the maths of the language will take more brain power.

I put the Faust Fm demo onto Organelle (can export Faust to Pd and lots of other things). Videos of this and other PD stuff on Organelle here:

These are awesome! Great idea making a DC DAC for it - what did you base it on?

The sc140 project (to fit scripts on twitter) is really inspiring: sc-140 | SuperCollider

I used both a few years back. As soon as i dove into supercollider more deeply PD just felt clumsy and tedious to work with. Now that you have things like Organelle in the market PD is starting look more and more interesting. Is the something similar device that uses SC?

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Not exactly similar to Organelle, but Norns by Monome uses Supercollider.

Thereā€™s a diy version, in the form of a shield for Rasberry Pi:

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The PD patch used amplitude modulation to encode an LFO signal on a 20kHz sine wave, which was sent out the laptop headphone output. My setup was limited to two channels, but you could do more with a better soundcard.

The DAC was just an AM decoder, pretty simple from what I remember, maybe a couple of opamps. An AM demodulator is basically an envelope follower, ie. a rectifier followed by a smoothing filter. It worked surprisingly well.

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This thread had my tinkering with Max and SuperCollider. I canā€™t make head-nor-tail of MaxMSP yet (I only have 20+ years programming experience though.) SuperCollider has a nice OO language, the architecture makes sense to me, and Iā€™m enjoying it.

Iā€™d like to learn Max, but even the basic tutorials areā€¦justā€¦what are they? they donā€™t tell me anything.

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Ah very interesting - might give that a try sometime!

The easier but more expensive option is sending CV via a soundcard with DC coupled outputs

I feel that way about SC, but I have 0 programming experience. I have been dabbling more and more into it since itā€™s free entertainment. Max & PD are kind of the same, the visual representation really helps me understand what is going on. Some audio driver files really messed up while I was learning how to set all of this up, and it made me rage quit SuperCollider due to a constant crackle. Now that it is fixed, I will be heading back into the SC world. Have you used Sonic Pi at all?

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I donā€™t think Iā€™ve used SonicPi. I would like to learn MaxMSP, I guess I need to find a set of tutorials that suit my brain better.

I guess SC is more suited to people whoā€™ve already programmed

Yeah, seems to be that way. Sonic Pi feels like an easier version of Supercollider. Has a lot of extensions for synths, samples, scales, etc. Iā€™m unsure but it seems like SC can be as chaotic as youā€™d like it to be but with Sonic Pi itā€™s more friendly to the masses without intensive knowledge.

Books about max

Thereā€™s a lot of literature out there for max. Once I learn PD more, Iā€™ll probably buy Max since it looks way smoother and friendly than PD.

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Yeah, I prefer books, have grabbed https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0190243732?psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE. Thanks!

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Acreil is great.

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Thanks for the link. I saved that one