Live coding (music) with Emacs Live

Live coding (music) with Emacs Live(github.com)

58 points by mattrepl 13 years ago | 16 comments

logn 13 years ago |

Anyone interested in this should also check out ChucK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChucK

scrumper 13 years ago | |

Thanks for this! Did not know about ChucK.

Since we're plugging stuff we like, ChucK co-author Perry Cook's book, here: http://www.amazon.com/Real-Sound-Synthesis-Interactive-Appli... is an excellent intro to DSP and synthesis techniques.

mhd 13 years ago |

I actually thought the screenshots are quite interesting with their scanline glitz, but apparently that's from postprocessing.

walterkim 13 years ago | |

Not sure if you can get that specific effect, but Cathode for Mac has lots of options:

http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/

mhd 13 years ago | | |

The author talked to the Cathode developer and even opened a feature request for iTerm2[1]. There seems to be some interest in this. Cathode is mostly about emulating old, slow hardware, this would be about the opposite (code wouldn't look too differently, though). A "movie hacker" terminal or editor for live coding would be pretty interesting. Hmm, maybe in addition to Xt/Gtk/OSX one could add an OpenGL interface to Emacs for maximum scriptability.

1: https://vimeo.com/22798433

pmr_ 13 years ago | |

I've just ported the theme to Emacs 24 [1] custom-theme.el and made the same realization.

[1] : https://gist.github.com/3723433

archangel_one 13 years ago | |

Yes, I was thinking it'd be fun to be able to switch Emacs into that mode at times. No doubt it'd drive you crazy if you used it too long though...

martinced 13 years ago | |

I think I've seen an Emacs video using the same "fake old retro" scanline look but I'm not sure how it was made. Could have been postprocessed on the whole video too.

Does anyone know how this effect was achieved?

SeoxyS 13 years ago | | |

After effects can do this easily:

For the glow: duplicate the video layer, add a fast blur effect and set it to overlay or color dodge blending mode.

For the scanlines: AFX has a scanlines/cathode effect that you can tweak to re-create that look. I can't recall off the top of my head how it's done, but I can look it up if you'd like (I've done it before, while fucking around in AFX [1]).

[1]: https://vimeo.com/41453548

FuzzyDunlop 13 years ago |

Sam Aaron, the guy who has done a bunch of screencasts with Overtone (and his emacs/dvtm config), and used it to create this emacs config setup, has used the same effect on pretty much everything. It really does add an element of coolness to the mix.

I've been using emacs live for a bit. It's great. It bundles some nice plugins and has sane defaults. The cyberpunk colour scheme is cool. It has some nice personal touches on the scratch buffer.

The downside is that the structure puts far more emphasis on maintaining the structure than adapting your config. If you want to keep it solid you can't use package manager without some changes, or (configure-group).

You might get the odd issue with the bundled plugins (auto-complete loved lisp and file system traversal but hated other languages), but for a "I want to live code and I want it to WORK" config, it's bloody good.

jipumarino 13 years ago |

Another similar project, SuperCollider: http://supercollider.sourceforge.net

And if you're on a Mac, Impromptu: http://impromptu.moso.com.au

vutekst 13 years ago | |

Emacs Live uses Overtone which is a Clojure layer over SuperCollider.

rjzzleep 13 years ago |

oh i like, how does this compare to pd and max/msp, apart from the fact that those are visual.

it seems that the overtone guys want to add a visual display in the future. but most comparisions of supercollider and max/msp are mainly focused on the frontend.

is there anything i can do with max that i can't with sc besides looking pretty? (although i do prefer a nice editor to a visual thingie)

fididj 13 years ago |

Where can one get information about how to actually code with this? The videos sure are fancy, but don't offer much information.

meunier 13 years ago |

It's worth noting you can also use vimclojure as a live Overtone environment. (or other slime-y vim methods)