Symbolic Composer

erich · Joined: Jan 08, 2007 Posts: 58 Location: US Audio files: 1

I wanted to ask if anyone used Symbolic Composer, to see what they thought of the support and information available when you buy it. I haven't programed anything before, but still want to get it, algorithmic music seems interesting, and would save time once you were used to it. Are there some tutorials available that are pretty good that come with it? Is the manual good?

lebenspuls · Joined: Aug 21, 2006 Posts: 31 Location: Germany

I used SC a few years ago quite a lot. The many examples helped me to develop some programming skills and also are quite inspiring.; so its basically a Lisp-environment with a lot of predefined functions. Nothing what you can't program yourself as a skilled Lisp-programmer (which I am still not!). Specially the Mac version with the MRAC-Library has a big library of useful compositional functions. For creating musical ideas I use it still. But for experimenting with certain algorithms I use Max most of the time. Beside the huge library coming with the program there is no support like the Max/MSP-Forum or this forum.
Hope this helps a bit

usw · Joined: Mar 22, 2007 Posts: 27 Location: valence france

What's really nice about Scom is...LISP !
I've been using it for 2/3 years, avoiding the use of the built-in functions (except the midi file compiler), and relying on common lisp primitives only, whenever possible.
I completely bypassed the zone/symbol/tonality scheme, and microtonal scales /free time resolution are much easier to handle now.

I recently discovered "ac toolbox" http://www.koncon.nl/ACToolbox/ it's free, relies on MCL as scom does (limited to non-intel macintoshes), has built in midi playback capability (that's a great feature), it can even handle realtime midi streams from cc's...Unfortunately, microtonality is limited to quicktime and kyma (otherwise frequencies are quantized to equal temperament). I think I prefer its layout to Scom's.