sc on windows trouble ?

[blue hell]

With all of the enthousiasm going on I couldn't resist and installed a windows version of SC (and to to my surprise I had tried so before in 2004, so I first cleaned that old stuff up a bit ... )

Anyway, almost all the examples I try give errors except for the first example on http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-12724.html whch gives some nice sounds.

Supposedly something is working alright, but in the DOS box named "psycollider.exe", the server I guess, there is a message :

[blue hell]

Oh and another warning as well, after compiling the class library :

[v-un-v]

Jan, fwiw, I've had the same experiences. The first patch worked effortlessly but the others failed. Maybe they're for SC2 only? Don't know.

What the main window is showing you is quite obvious because SC is based on the smalltalk programming language which fortunately reads like English. (as opposed to gobledegook!). SC just can't find the stuff it needs to run. But I guess you've worked that out anyway?

Hang in there! Like good wine these things need time to mature.

In the meantime it's worth requesting Dave Cottle's tutorial. I've been reading through it and it's nice and easy to take in- although I may print and bind a copy so I can read it away from the computer.

I imagine the PC version is pretty similar to the Mac version. So hopefully there should be some answers flowing soon.

Tom

[majutsu]

the problem is that the gui for windows is swingosc. the poster of that gui code is using cocoa classes on a mac. some mac users use swingosc too apparently. there is a help file in help/swingosc called cocoa vs. java or something like that. it translates mac cocoa classes into swing osc java. Basically you add a J. pen is Jpen. scope is Jscope etc. I tried translating his code, but as the help file says "A good subset of the mac os only gui elements have been converted, with some funtionality still missing."

in other words, he's using some other gui interface. only the code i gave from david cottle's tutorial (which makes the cool sounds) which has no gui interface, will work for all builds and versions of sc3. gui code with swingosc will have jpen, jscwindow, etc

courtesy of sciss

here you go. copy and paste this in the new code window. control-enter. a little pen drawing for you

(
w = JSCWindow.new.front;
w.view.background_( Color.white );
w.drawHook = {
var x1, y1, x2, y2, x1a, y1a, x2a, y2a, txr, tyr, rr;

JPen.translate( 200, 200 );
JPen.scale( 0.5, 0.5 );
JPen.width = 0.5;
x1 = 175.0.bilinrand;
x2 = 175.0.bilinrand;
y1 = 175.0.bilinrand;
y2 = 175.0.bilinrand;
x1a = 15.0.bilinrand;
x2a = 15.0.bilinrand;
y1a = 15.0.bilinrand;
y2a = 15.0.bilinrand;
txr = 2.0.bilinrand;
tyr = 2.0.bilinrand;
rr = 0.05pi.bilinrand;
JPen.moveTo( 175 @ 0 );
200.do { arg i;
JPen.translate( txr, tyr );
JPen.rotate( rr );
JPen.line( x1 @ y1, x2 @ y2 );
x1 = x1 + x1a;
x2 = x2 + x2a;
y1 = y1 + y1a;
y2 = y2 + y2a;
};
JPen.stroke;
};
w.refresh;
)

[majutsu]

or maybe the oscilloscope is your fancy:
remember in windows alt+. to stop.

(
{
SinOsc.ar([225, 450, 900], 0, 0.2)
+ LPF.ar(
LFPulse.ar(226 * [1, 2, 5],[0,0.1,0.1],0.2, 0.2),
JMouseX.kr(20, 10000, 1)
)
}.jscope;
)

[blue hell]

[v-un-v]

[blue hell]

[majutsu]

you seem to be a little confused bluehell
let me try again
sc is a sound language
any graphic stuff uses a gui interface which is NOT part of sc3 per se. most mac heads use SCUM. Windows is using swingosc. Paule's examples, which are the only one's posted so far but mine, don't work in windows OR IN osx 10.x . he is using SCUM gui. he is definitely knowledgeable but his gui is out of date. he was posting them for me in response to my request for code that had gui so i could make my own sounds apps (like a self-designed ableton for my own needs etc). in fact, mac and everyone will be using swingosc in the next wesleyean builds etc. swingosc has won the gui war. But swingosc is being edited now by sciss and will be out in a month. Probably everyone will use swingosc in 2007. the mac heads will have an easy time converting as will those of us using the soon to be "old" swingosc now. understand? I gave you two examples of gui code from the current swingosc so you know it does work. glad it does.

the main problem with programs like sc3 is that, not being commercial, everyone uses different builds. like all open source crap, it's in constant disarray and civil war, like the middle east. no rule of law.

people are coming to a consensus though.

thing is, when i ask for help on sclist, mac pros at any gui and sc3 can help me because they know the language so well that these little dialects are barely an impedient to them.

the sc3 sound code is pretty stable. dave cottle's tutorial, which you clearly need, is useable on any build since it's free of gui basically.

none of the gui interfaces are well documented at all. there is no documentation of scum, swingosc or anything to my satisfaction. it's just trial and error.

this is the only this that makes max/msp so attractive. it's solid, completely the same on all platforms and comes with two huge 300 page pdf books, one for max and one for msp. it's also $500+USD and has shitty oscilllators and no freedom. you want freedom, you must accept chaos and self-teaching. the worse thing about windows means using swingosc, which means you can't take advantage of all the little mac code stuffed away on various forums over the past few years. but since most people have windows in the world, the balance of code has almost flipped to favor swingosc in a mere two-three months.

without getting into a really pointless and boring debate, that is my beef with mac, that steve has ripped off his customers, over-charged them for inferior hardware, and rendered them incommunicative with the rest of the technical windows, .net, and linux world since day one out of personal greed and ego. BUT he really seems to be coming to wisdom lately, and his embrace of intel is special and commendable. Maybe the future is now and we can all get along.

brian

[v-un-v]

[majutsu]

as i said this was not to activate mac cultists but to deconstruct the idea you are accidently giving bluehell that his windows build is broken or lacking functionality.

as you said, electromusic should be about knowledge, not this hodgepodge of political and computing politics, so before you even responded i have already started a new thread translating dave cottle's tutorial when necessary into windows. please enjoy it. it's very cool. this thread is dead to me. so no more politics, the world has more than enough of that uselessness already.

you are free to discuss politics is some other subforum of electromusic i imagine, but since i am not interested and don't plan on going there, i won't see it. i only plan on being here discussing supercollider.

[blue hell]

[paul e.]

interesting

so SC has really made it's mark in Windows in the last few years...

before it was pretty much a Mac OS 9 only thing....which is why my GUI patches are now 'out of date'....SC 3 on OS 9 is very 20th century apparently...like glitch-techno and Enron

unless you still use OS 9 for everything...like me hehe

i'll still use SC2 or SC3 in OS 9..when feeling nostalgic

still very funky...but i guess my patches are now 'defunct' to the larger community...

[majutsu]

puale. i think you're awesome. no matter what tool i master, i usually suck in terms of musical creativity and interest anyway. i am just a geek tweak, which is why i like supercollider. the more fiddliness i have, the more likely it is i can spend ten years at my computer and have not one song.

you are using os9 with supercollider because you are using a tool to make music. i think most musicians will want to stick with something that works for them, not updating to osx. computers are tools. if what you have does the tasks you need done, then you have what you need. i probably see the technology as an end in itself rather than a tool.

[paul e.]

hey man thanks for the kind words

if it were not for 'tweak geeks' we would no have all these amazing tools to work with to create electro-music!!!

this technical know-how is something i marvel at, really..way outside my abilities

yet, everyone here has a bit of both going on...

we all like to tinker with 'science' to some degree...to get down to the zero's and ones'...i like to mess around in SC...but some memebrs could create programmes like that from scratch!

and yet all of us have that musical side to us...

maybe it's via an old piano ...or an ultra-mega-expanded G2 synth...or experimenting around in a looper programme

but 'electro', one way or another

because we have to some lesser or greater degree an element of science and art running through everythign we do here

this 'live coding' trend is very intriguing....it calls for a realtime balance between left and right brain activities..science and art...all while fending off the hordes of rabid fans !

you'd have to be one very clever cookie to make it work

[v-un-v]

[Kassen]

*blush*

I like being called clever as much as the next nerd-punk but I wouldn't livecode on a stage just yet. Making somealgortithmic bleeps realy quickly would be ok but honestly I don't have any illusions about how musically interesting that would be. I've been programing in ChucK seriously now for only a few months though so I have hope for the future. :¬)


links;
live coding;
http://toplap.org/forums.html/Main_Page

chuck;
http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/

ChucK is "open source crap" but the main build is firmly in the hands of one guy. It is inddeed in a bit of "disaray" and we're kinda proud of that. Bugs are good, bug lead to comunity (by finding them) and they lead to debate on what the proper functionality would be (paraphrasing Ge Wang here, chucK's main developer).

Livecoding is also inherently open source, in fact the whole history of computer music started with open source systems. Open source facilitates colaborations, open source means you can figure out how your instrument works and modify it if need be, much like some people put different pickups in their guitar. This -I think- is good.

To get back to SC; SC runs perfectly fine on Linux and for those unable or unwilling to purchace a Mac yet also having problems running SC under Windows that's a serious option. In fact my close friend and well respected SC whiz Nescivi runs it on a IBM laptop under Debian.

[majutsu]

lol kassen I've been in chuck for a few weeks too. it's very, very, very appealing. What are your thoughts so far? i did know how far it can go. what, in your opinion, are it's similarities and differences to all of its friends: max/msp, sc3, pd, reaktor?

last time i did sc3 linux they had no gui. is the gui totally functional in linux now? i've already got dual boot, so this would be simple.

[Kassen]

majustu; Lots of questions, good thing I'm waiting for a phone call and have a bit of time to kill.

The easy bit is SC on Linux; I don't know. I tried to get into it but the syntax didn't click with me. I saw Nescivi use it a lot but I don't think she's too much into graphical interfaces and more into HID stuff and so on. It's supposed to be (or was?) slightly ahead of the Win version in terms of functionality.

About ChucK; First of all ChucK is very young and somewhat imature in some ways. For example it's filters need some sorting out because while it's nice to be able to manually write coeficients to a digital filter it would be nicer to also have a ready to use sweepable LP filter (this is just around the corner, one should be imported soon).

Personally I'm in love with the syntax which is very compact and to me very readable, I like it over MAX/PD and Reaktor at the moment because I come from the NM and was looking for a text based interface to get around some of the limitations of graphical ones.

Compared to SC it's obviously less mature but I found it much easier to get into. I also like how it's growing up quickly with loads of new stuff getting added frequently. ChucK is build from the ground up to be expressive, by that I mean the syntax often makes sense to me in musical terms, it's maybe a bit of a experiment in ways to deal with sound more then it is about computing sound as eficiently as possible (at this point). This also resulted in specialised editors with build in virtual machines. ( http://soundlab.cs.princeton.edu/listen/audicle_icmc2004_sm.mov (large filebut worth your time) )

I myself am using it to develop a system for live performance, basically a computer based step sequencer for live music writing/performance. I'm finding tht much easier then I expected, I'm borowning ideas left and right (from grooveboxes, from Live, from trackers and so on), testing what works, refining it and linking everything to keyboard shortcuts and joypad input. I'm having great fun there and my program actually runs very stably and dependably.

On the graphical side there should soon be OpenGL support which should be cross platform (Mac, Win and Linux); provided my graphical card can keep up I might use that.

Generally it's a exiting system to work with because it's time based syntax offers a new perspective and it's growing so quickly. At this moment you'd need to get something like Java to make a program with a real graphical interface which might be considered a weak spot but I myself am currently looking to have a instrument that places very little emphasis on graphical feedback; I'm trying to get away from staring at the schreen.

I realy can't say how it compares to other things for other people. It's clear that it's a little imature right now, it's also clear that it encourages new perspecives on dealing with time and concurency but how those ae as a trade-off on a larger scale is hard to say; I just know I'm very happy with it.

Compared to the issue at hand I think Ge made the right choice to develop for all three OS's in paralel (though the Mac version is slightly ahead with regard to the editors and the Linux version is slightly laging) and OpenGL seems like a very good choice for more or less universal graphical interfaces.

Does that answer your question?

[v-un-v]

Kas, is the coding different on Linux compared to Mac or PC?

It would be nice if we could all find some common ground here- because the Mac and PC versions don't seem to talk to each other.

Ubuntu's running nicely on my PC

[majutsu]

it's official
there is no gui on linux yet as of 8/6/06 from j mc himself:

"James McCartney's SuperCollider3 (SC3) is a popular sound synthesis and music composition environment formerly available only for Macintosh but now available in a Linux port. Once again the original program makes heavy use of the Mac's graphics-rich interface, but the actual SC3 engine can be decoupled from its GUI and ported by itself. That is the current condition of the Linux port of SC3: its synthesis engine and its language interface have been successfully ported to Linux, but its GUI components await the transfer from Mac to Linux."

therefore, windows is actually ahead of linux as far as sc3 goes, since there is fully functional GUI using swingosc. I need GUI so as to have buttons and slider that do different things musically. Many have said that it should be possible to use GNUstep to make some sort of linux gui for sc3, but i didn't find any to actually outline that they've done it.

i haven't had time to read the rest of your post yet kassen, just wanted to post that important info. I am now going to read your post in full, so as to particularly read your thoughts on chuck. that's what i'm most interested in. Linux is hard to use only for me anyway since i like wordperfect 12 and so does my wife, a writer, and linux only has wordperfect8 and that's very buggy still. (for example, you can't use enhanced window options). also, you can use cross office to try wordperfect in linux, but it crashes constantly according to linux forums and you lose data.

[majutsu]

I now have had time to read your comments on chuck. Very interesting! and much appreciated! That's what i thought that it was still rather experimental, but it's very exciting indeed. I guess i'm still committed to sc3 psycollider for now as to building my own "majutsu music system". swingosc is very cool. has anyone ever heard of putting cocoa classes on windows . . . . why not?

i wish open source code would be more cross platform. why do they always have to make a mess of things? in terms of stability and cross platform, it's clear that max/msp is king. but we all know the limitations of graphical programming. there are just so many things supercollider can do that could never be done in max/msp or reaktor. if things are going to be dumbed down that much, i'd frankly rather use ableton live, as it's certainly easy and fun to make "choons". but of course, no self-respecting geek can do that for long!

[v-un-v]

[Kassen]

[majutsu]

actually kassen, you expressed my worst fear about psycollider. i've just started. sound functionality - great, GUI - pretty good, MIDI unknown. i am nervously looking at my keyboard and controller, wondering what lies in store this afternoon/tomorrow. if there is not acceptable MIDI, whole project is out the window. Of course, max/msp is always a backup.

I think a Chuck forum would be cool, but i suspect it needs some time. maybe a few more months for interest to build. even less have tried than sc3. i love the chuck website too v-un-v. I think those guys are funny and way cool. i just can't tell if there priority is music or sound computing, so hard to say how useful any of this will be. kassen sounds like he's kicking serious ass though. i am very interested!