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1. I et berum ise eR e ES Sa Tet bene 69 AudioFile 5 eI RERO MI MU EET 70 CeciliaModule s iecit e rte epar eR eo ere NE NRE NEERA 70 Comment eas Sa gaat olaweiged Sea gdad A E E E NAESER 71 Clojute ODJeCE eee teneo teet te eot deeb dacs at CUR Ae REESE ETE weds ERE EQ e steels aay 71 External SoundObject eee epe ee eee eere rend 73 GENETICS COLE c sores cs ents eese eoo ee gx tie de Reyes ole ee eese shes woe Beste EUR e eder qs 74 tan Ge EET 75 JIMA rue 75 IaneObject sre re E er Ee 79 Gzedtn 80 PatternObject 952 Ed Net e Ne ee eT 82 PianoRoll 5 cette e oer tete HEEL ne Se ao P CER INE 87 PolyObject ie ee RON RN 90 M 90 RINGO CCH x i eee oor e ND vedas 92 Sound SoundObjJect dee Destino ive epo vet esee 92 Tracker gv UR CERERI ER NUN ee M 92 ZakIneObj8ct N N sees e 97 Note Proces sOrs Was oe I e o ee e ER OPE EE edul 99 VANE 6 PIOCGSSOE eoe eoe TOR Ae ENTRE Sive une dee EN BO ee 99 Equals Processor 3 te ee heads eet eo e er e E erent 99 Inversion Processor eee So eere aei osc ge tuere ve Seadoo pe eR EO Td o tH 100 Teme Add Processor E viv erre deel 100 I3n M ltiply Processor ee eicot ee dete qu dee oen 101
2. The instrument library on the left panel is where instruments are saved for use in any blue project To place an instrument in the library so it is always available drag it to the Instrument Library folder File Edit Project Tools Script Window Help Start Render From 0 0 score orchestra tables global ugdo Project properties sound file User Instrument Library Orchestra Bil Instrument Library x1 Instr ID Granular wi Oscillator vocoder Assigning Instrument to Arrangement The gt button brings an instrument from the library to the project To remove an instrument from the project select it and press It is important to understand that instruments which are in the Instrument Library but not the Arrangement are not available for use in the csd because they haven t been assigned an instrument id number or string if used as a Csound named instrument Now that the instrument is there we need to define how it will sound We use ordinary csound code to do this since it is a GenericInstrument The code for the instrument is written on the lower right panel inside the Instrument Text tab within Instrument Editor tab Make sure you type the code in this tab and not the Global Orchestra or Global Score tabs We will create a simple oscillator with an amplitude envelope like this kenv linen 10000 1 p3 1 asig oscil kenv 440 gitab outs asig asig 124 Your First Project File
3. code for generating score score myScoreGenerator where myScoreGenerator is a function that will generate Csound SCO Sound SoundObject Accepts NoteProcessors no Inline instruments When experimenting with sounds or if you re going to make a soundEffect and not a whole composition it might be tedious to go and make an instrument and then have to edit score information This object is here so that you can add instruments directly to the timeline What is generated is a minimal i statement that corresponds to the sound soundObject s bar on a timeline This abstracts a concept of working with the sound itself instead of through the level of time of a note Tracker Accepts NoteProcessors yes 92 Reference Trac ker Steps 64E 1 Use Keyboard Notes Octave db About the Tracker The Tracker SoundObject is a table based tool to enter in patterns of notes using the Tracker paradigm but in a way specific to Csound SCO work Each Tracker is organized in vertical Tracks of n number of steps where n is configurable by the user defaults to 64 steps Notes are entered into each Track with Tracks being configurable as to what parameters columns to use Unique to the blue Tracker SoundObject is the support for microtonal scales using Scala scale files as well as support for Csound s Tied Notes feature Introduction to the Interface The interface consists of three main areas the top tool bar the main tracking
4. 141 0 2 XE 11 72 22 il 4 2 3 ELECE 24 1152642 15 Will become i102 4 VA 2 327125 zB Ae 21 Th 5 2 2 1 61 2 3 Start times of notes are all modified such that the notes that are pushed to the end of list will start at the end time of the last note before it For the above examples the duration of the note list ast a whole did not change at all However when there are overlapping notes as in the following example where note index of 3 was used i1 05 0 0 4 i12 5 0 1 4 i1 45 0 2 4 il 65 0 3 4 i1 8 5 0 4 4 il 10 5 0 5 4 i112 5 0 6 4 il 14 5 0 7 4 il165 084 11 18 5 0 9 4 The resultant scores duration has changed as shown below il il il il 9 rl cl il 13 il 15 il 7 X95 A NO ADS Orie ooo OI O1 OFf1 OF Ul 5 5 W OES x X X N Be A OS OOOO O1 WBN n A A aS as 106 Reference il 21 0 5 0 6 4 Please be aware of this behavior when using this NoteProcessor with scores that have overlapping notes SubList Processor Parameters start end The SubListProcessor will cut out notes from the soundObject s generated noteList An example of it s use may be that you have a 12 tone row as soundObject in the soundObject library and you re using instances of it as the basis of your work You may only want to use notes 1 3 of the row so you would use the SublistProcessor with a start of 1 and an end of 3 The SubListProcessor will cut out n
5. To build blue the following programs are used Java Development Kit 1 4 Apache Ant or Apache Maven JUnit IzPack xsltproc Apache FOP Sun JAI library Getting the Sources Contains javac java compiler and other development tools blue comes with both an Apache Ant build file as well as an Apache Maven 1 0 x build file Either can be used to build blue from the commandline though the user can also easily import the sources and libraries of blue into an IDE i e Netbeans Eclipse Idea and use the IDE s project build system The Maven build file is mostly used when doing releases while the Ant build file will be more useful for those who are simply wanting to build and use blue JUnit is required to run the unit tests and is integrated as part of the build IzPack is used for building the blue installer jar if you are not building an installer this library won t be necessary xsltproc is used to build all versions of the manual To build the PDF manual Apache FOP and Sun JAI library are required To build blue you will either need to download a src zip file from the Soureforge release server or use CVS to download the latest sources Maintaining a Version of blue from CVS After checking out from CVS and building one should modify the appropriate starter script in the blue bin directory for your platform to correctly point to BLUE HOME After that running CVS update and rebuilding using Ant should keep yo
6. To increment and decrement values in a cell use the arrow keys to go over the cell you want to increment or decrement and then use ctrl up or ctrl down respectively to change the value NOTE This operation operates differently for each column type and does nothing for the String type Please see the column type information above for more information Keyboard Note Mode Like most trackers the Tracker object has keyboard shortcuts that will allow for very quickly adding notes To enable Keybaord Note mode either click the checkbox on the top tool bar or use the keyboard shortcut ctrl k By enabling Keyboard Note mode the keys on the keyboard will be mapped to note values much like a piano keyboard When the selected cell is of type PCH blue PCH or MIDI pressing those keys will enter in a value related the keyboard mapping see Shortcuts section The user is also able to change the base octave of the Keyboard Note mode To change the octave use either the spinner control on the top tool bar or use the keyboard shortcuts ctrl shift up or ctrl shift down By default the base octave starts at middle c Shortcuts Table 3 3 Keyboard Shortcuts Shortcuts Description ctrl space clear or duplicate previous note ctrl shift space set or clear OFF note ctrl up increment value ctrl down decrement value ctrl t toggle note tie ctrl x cut selected notes ctrl c copy selected notes ctrl v paste notes from copy
7. il 0 0 0 5 7 00 il 0 5 0 5 7 00 il T0 0 5 56 00 1115 95 0 59 7 00 The 2 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration SoundObject with time behavior set to scale Tip One can use this NoteProcessor to quickly try testing a score with another insturment To do this use this NoteProcessor to reassign pl Inversion Processor Parameters pfield value This NoteProcessor flips all values in designated pfield about an axis value The following score i102 80 il T 85 iT 2 95 il 100 If processed with an InversionProcessor with value 90 and pfield 4 would result in il 0 0 0 5 100 0 TE 005 025 9590 il 1 0 0 5 85 0 it 1 5 0 5 80 0 The p2 and p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration SoundObject with time behavior set to scale LineAdd Processor Parameters pfield LineAdd String The LineAdd Processor adds values to a user defined pfield This noteProcessor differs from the AddProcessor in that the value added is variable over time The LineAdd String is a set of beat value pairs that are like the breakpoints on curve The following score i102 80 il t 80 T E 280 100 Reference il 80 If processed with a LineAdd Processor with LineAddString set to 0 0 6 3 and pfield set to 4 would result in 11 0 0 0 5 80 0 11 0 5 0 5 81 0 il 1 0 0 5 82 0 il 1 5 0 5 83 0 The p2 and p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject w
8. Chapter 2 Concepts Rendering Introduction blue offers a number of ways to render a project each method useful for different purposes you may have The following section explains the ways which blue is able to render a blue project file as well as possible use case scenarios to guide you on how that feature may be useful Render Methods Render in Real Time Rendering in uses the project s Real Time render settings to render the project in realtime to the users soundcard This is the most common rendering one will likely use To use this you can press the play button at the top of the window use the Project gt Render Stop Project menu option or use the F9 shortcut key Generate CSD to Screen blue s general method of communicating with Csound is by generating a CSD file and calling Csound to run it For debugging purposes it is often useful to see if what you think you are doing inside blue is matching the generated CSD file You can generate the CSD to screen by using the Project gt Generate CSD to Screen menu option or by using the ctrl shift g shortcut Generate CSD to Disk If you d like to generate a CSD from the current project to a file you can do so by using the Project gt Generate CSD to File menu option or by using the ctrl g shortcut Render to Disk The Render to Disk option will use the project s Disk Render Options from its project properties to generate a soundfile on disk format of file depends on
9. CommandFlags section of Csound manual for settings Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering Message Level Note Amplitudes Enables note amplitude messages from Csound m1 Out of Range Messages Enables samples out of range messages from Csound m2 Warnings Enables warning messages from Csound m4 Benchmark Information Enables benchmark information from Csound m128 13 Getting Started Advanced Settings Advanced Settings Extra flags to append to the commandline that might not be covered by options in the UI Pressing the button will open the documentation for the Csound command flags Csound Documentation Root but be set for this to work Disk Render APPEAR Program Options TTEA General Project Defaults Text Colors Playpack Utility Realtime Render Disk Render Project Settings Csound Executable csound ve ksmps nchnls File Output Settings vi File Format WAY v Sample Format SHORT v _ Save Peak Information in Header 1 Dither Output Rewrite Header While Rendering Message Level vj Note Amplitudes vj Out of Range Messages vj Warnings vj Benchmark Information Advanced Settings Project Settings Csound Executable This is a command for what version of csound to execute when blue renders the project to disk The default value of csound works if you have a version of Csound in your path named csound You
10. csound Wdo dac sr to use when rendering to disk Value defaults to value set in Program Options ksmps to use when rendering to disk Value defaults to value set in Program Options nchnls to use when rendering to disk Value defaults to value set in Program Options The checkbox sets whether Odbfs is used at all in the project when rendering to disk If enabled the value will be assigned to the value in the textfield The default for the value is set ing Program Options as well as if Odbfs is enabled by default or not Name to use for the rendered sound file If a value is not given blue will ask on each render what to name the file and where to render it to If the Ask on Render is enabled blue will always ask on each render what to name the file and where to render it to This is useful to enable if temporarily rendering parts of a project or if the project is only meant to be used to render small sound samples Enables what kind of messages Csound should report The values default to what is set in Program Options Extra flags to append to the commandline that might not be covered by options in the UI Pressing the button will open the documentation for the Csound command flags Csound Documentation Root but be set for this to work If Complete Override is enabled the value given in the Advanced Settings textbox will be used as given and no other values set from the UI will be used Projects prior to 0 106 0 wi
11. endloop 4 straight 4 4 loop 5 play 2 with 1 play 3 with 3 endloop loop 5 play plist 1 with 4 play 4 with ilist 1 2000 2000 2000 2000 NF 1 2000 11 EE 2 0 v4 ap qm 46 0 5 Pow PN Ds Out qs pope cq 136 Tutorial 1 play 3 with 1 endloop loop 5 play plist 1 with 4 play 5 with ilist 1 play 4 with 1 endloop Having unzipped the drumscript zip into my home direcotory I used the following commandline perl home steven drumText drums pl input Iran the test button and got nothing I got alot of exceptions printed to the console Running the drum script outside of blue I saw that by default some logging information was being printed the name of the infile and input Modifying mark s perl script a bit to comment out those two print statements I reran the script within blue and success The generated output from mark s script successfully was rebrought back into blue Notes on Score Generating Programs and the External SoundObject Score generation programs can either print out to stdout or write out to a file If writing out to a file care must be taken to use the outfile parameter of the External SoundObject so that after the external program finishes blue will know to grab the file s contents back into blue Python SoundObject The Python SoundObject is a Python only scripting SoundObject which uses the Jython Python interpreter more i
12. will become gkcutoff ObjectBuilder Accepts NoteProcessors Yes 80 Reference This SoundObject allows users to build their own SoundObjects by using the same widgets and features as the BlueSynthBuilder for creating user interfaces as well as using either Python script or External Script for the score generation When generating score the script has token values replaced by values from the user interface before generating The scripts generated in the same manner as the PythonObject and as the ExternalObject Note The code completion feature using ctrl shift space for values from the UI that is available in BlueSynthBuilder is also available in this SoundObject Interface Editor Object Builder Interface Code Pre Manage Pr Min La Duration Frequency Num Notes 50 Reference Code Editor Object Builder Interface Code Command Line External noteTenplat freq lt index lt index gt zmaxDuration lt minDburation numNotes int znumMotez max min for i rangeinumMotes Z PatternObject Accepts NoteProcessors yes 82 Reference Pattern Mame x il 2 3 4 Snare m m mum Hihatz pass Drum EE E Pattern Score 14 0 25 80 Reference About the PatternObject The PatternObject is pattern based score editor based on the author s previous project Patterns It is a fl
13. About blue blue is an music composition environment for use with Csound blue interacts with Csound by generating CSD files which it then feeds to Csound for compilation Any version of Csound that can be called by commandline is able to be used with blue One of blue s main features is the graphical timeline of soundObjects of which a special soundObject the polyObject is able to group other soundObjects polyObjects feature their own timeline allowing for timelines within timelines soundObjects can be anything that generates notes be it a block of Csound SCO a script in python or a graphical object SoundObjects may further have noteProcessors added to them which may do things like add 3 to all p4 values or of these notes only generate the first three NoteProcessors are especially useful when used with Instance soundObjects from the soundObject Library The soundObject library allows for working with soundObjects by making instances of a soundObject Instances point to a soundObject and when they generate notes they use the soundObject they are pointing to to generate the notes for them Instances however can have their own properties which they will apply to the generated notes so that they can be of different duration and have different start times as well as have different noteProcessors used with them the advante of instances versus manually copying a soundObject over and over again is that if you want to change the notes
14. Because blue variables are a text swap the above use of the bracket notation that Csound uses was necessary For a score with a 20 second duration the above note would have been generated as 120 0 20 10 95 1 1000 Because of the blue variable used the note will correclty play regardless of when the score starts If the the blue variable was note used and was put as a note in the Score timeline the reverb may not run Note When blue variables were created blue did not have a Mixer system implemented The above system continues to function the practice of using the Mixer is highly recommended This feature is left in for legacy projects 42 Getting Started Tools BlueShare Instruments Effects _ Blue Share Import Export Manage Available Instruments gt Latest Instruments Name Categories ig Categories Submitted By D Latest Instruments Tutorial Instruments 7 D Analog Models 14 B Unsorted 16 D FM Instruments 3 D Granular Synthesis Instrum D Drums 8 Sound Effects 1 5 5 Physical Models 4 BdTR v2 0 Sampler Pluck phaser Sine modulo pluck Pluck Supersaw Palamino 3 EastCross v0 3 Fossil SndWarp markvp markvp markvp markvp markvp bwong bwong bwong mbechard Instrument Name BdTR v2 0 Instrument Type blue orchestra BlueSynthBuilder D Algorithmics 7 blueX7 0 Collaborat
15. One of the things I used to do is keep an installation of blue on a zip disk including my work The nice thing about this was that I was able to take this disk and work off it while at work on a windows machine as well as take it home everyday to my linux machine and start up blue without having to do anything different Because I used the PythonObject at that time I didn t have to worry at all about anything installed within either system as all of it was contained within blue It s also a reassuring thought that if I took my work to a friend s computer be it a macintosh windows or linux pc I wouldn t have to worry about if Python was installed on their computer Besides these very practical issues the way you can go about using the PythonObject differs very much from the usage of Python with the externalObject With the externalObject each script run is its own entity run with a different interpreter This means that memory is not shared between instances of the externalObject variables and results of execution 138 Tutorial 1 in one externalObject are not accessible to another externalObject However with the PythonObject the interpreter is not reinitialized between runs meaning you can share results between one PythonObject and the next This can of course lead to very convoluted methods of developing scripts within blue which is of course not recommended but it does have some very pragmatic possibilities which are very us
16. f5 0 128 7 1128 1 damping f6 0 128 7 0 128 0 init velocity f7 0 128 7 0 128 128 trajectory you will get the following output gi ftgen 0 0 128 7 0 128 0 initpos gi ftgen 0 0 128 7 1 128 1 masses gi ftgen 0 0 128 7 0 128 2 centering force gi ftgen 0 0 128 7 1 128 1 damping gi ftgen 0 0 128 7 0 128 0 init velocity gi ftgen 0 0 128 7 0 128 128 trajectory This work is based on the Steven Yi s FTable Converter web page utility located here http www csounds com stevenyi ftable html Python Console gt gt gt 4 3 print a Python Console Window Python Console The Python Console allows you to interactively write and execute python code using the Jython interpreter built in to blue Because blue does not clear the environment of the interpreter between runs the console can be useful to interactively inspect objects Some ways you might use the console e Use dir to inspect objects to see what methods and members they have e Use help to view the documentation on an object or class After generating a score or using the Test button on a PythonObject you can interactively test functions you have written by calling it using code in the console Practice your python coding live The console works much like running python interactively in a console or terminal At the gt prompt you can type in some code then press enter to execute the code
17. such as layer name muting soloing and other features By using the Score Manager Dialog you can add as many Layer Groups as you like as well as many layers to each group as you like You can also push up and down Layer Groups to reorganize them The same add remove push up push down actions are also available for Layers within a Layer Group 17 Getting Started Note Add Remove Push Up Push Down for layers is also available while working in the main score area by right clicking the Layer panels on the right and selecting the options from the popup menu Also all LayerGroups support having NoteProcessors used with them Using a NoteProcessor on a LayerGroup will affect all notes generated within that LayerGroup Editing the LayerGroup s NoteProcessors can be done by right clicking on the root Score node in the Score Bar described below Regarding the design a Layer Group is primarily responsible for generating Csound Score notes However they are also able to generate tables instruments and anything else that is usable in Csound It is up to the developer to choose what features the Layer Group will use SoundObject SoundObject Layer Groups are one of the primary Layer Group types They support the SoundObject system in blue for scoring them in time on the timeline They also are the canvas on which automations are drawn SoundObject Layer Groups are divided into SoundLayers Each SoundLayer can contain SoundObjects of a
18. the score editor looks a lot like it does when you re editing an empty blue score That s because the main score is just one big container for notes like PolyObjects in fact in the code the main score IS a PolyObject You can see which container you are currently editing by looking at the buttons just underneath the tabs for score orchestra etc When you re editing the main score there will only be one button there called root you re editing the root container When you re editing a PolyObject called Group A you ll see two buttons root and Group A Pressing any of these buttons will change the view to edit that container Once a PolyObject has been created you can add and arrange SoundObject on it just like you do in the main score Each PolyObject is going to have its own Snap and Time Display settings too so you may want to set those accordingly Add SoundLayers just as you would in the main score too After you ve added all of the notes you wish to the PolyObject click on the root button and feel free to move the PolyObject around in the main score just as you would any other SoundObject Add NoteProcessors too or alter the Time Behavior these changes in turn will be applied to the contents of the PolyObject Advanced Time Before tackling some of the more advanced concepts of PolyObjects a couple of clarifications must be made When this document refers to editing the actual PolyObject that means editing it
19. 33 Getting Started Effects Library S Effects Library Effects Library Reverhs Inputs Outputs E L Reverbsc Interface Code Comments ReverbSc Feedback Cut Off Wet Dry 0 65 Effects are created and managed in your Effects Library which is accessible from the Tools menu The Effects Library is program wide so any Effect in the library will be accessible to use from any project you are working on In the picture above you will see the library where one can create Effects as well as organize them into groups The organization into groups within the library will be reflected in the Effects popup that appears when the user is looking to add Effects to their Mixer channels Getting Started To add a group or new Effect right click on any node and choose the option from the popup The popup will also allow you to cut copy paste groups or Effects which is useful when reorganizing or when creating new Effects based on older ones Once an Effect or group is added you can edit the the name by double clicking the node in the tree Selecting an effect by clicking it once will populate the editor on the right The picture above shows the User Interface editor for the Effect Like other BlueSynthBuilder based editors in blue clicking Edit Enabled will allow you to move between to edit modes one in which you can add remove and move around widgets and another where you can interact with the widgets
20. All output from python functions including 50 Getting Started things like print statements in PythonObjects in the Score or Python NoteProcessors will output to the Python Console Some useful shortcuts available while in the console Table 1 2 Shortcuts for the Python Console Shortcuts Description ctrl up ctrl down cycle through previous commands used ctrl l clear the console also available from the rt click popup menu Other Features AutoBackup and Recovery Temporary backups of open projects are generated every minute for projects which have previously been saved to disk new projects not yet saved are not backed up If blue quits unexpectedly those files will remain otherwise on normal closing of the file they are deleted If on opening a file a backup if found with a date newer than the original file the option to open from the backup or the original is given If the backup is chosen it is required to use Save As to save over the original file or to a new file At that point the backup is deleted If the original file is chosen then the backup file will be overwritten the next time the autobackup thread runs Sound Object Freezing Introduction Sound Object Freezing allows you to free up CPU cycles by pre rendering soundObjects Frozen soundObjects can work with global processing instruments and files are relative to the directory the project file is in so can be moved from computer
21. BlueLive buttons blueLive toggle button to turn on off blueLive Recompile button that will stop the current blueLive run recompile the project and start blueLive again All Notes Off Button to turn off any hanging notes in a blueLive run MIDI Input toggle button enabled disables blue MIDI input into blueLive Score Bar the poly object bar shown above with only one polyObject root shows what polyObject you are currently editting if you were to add a polyObject named phrase 1 to the main timeline shown above then double click that polyObject to edit it the polyObject bar would have two buttons on it one for root and one for phrase 1 you would then be editting phrase 1 s timeline by clicking on the root button of the timeline you would then return out of the polyObject s timeline and back in the root s timeline SoundLayer Editor Below the polyObject bar on the left you will see the soundLayer edittor here you can change the name of the soundLayer as well as mute the layer all soundObject s on muted layers will not be used to generate notes when creating CSD files on the bottom of the soundLayer edittor are four buttons V and and V will push up or push down soundLayers HINT You can move multiple soundLayers by clicking on one soundLayer then holding down shift and clicking on the last of the soundLayers you want to move then using the and V buttons the will add a
22. ERI 58 PolyObj ects eI PR ph Ii 58 IntroductiOonezs i eot ate Pat ONERE REV VAS PR TR EN POS EN SERERE ERU Eres 58 hr xe PEE 59 Advanced Jones ea er EE ron FER e E REESE ERES EPRRER EN ERR ES 59 Best Practices oen E NEUE IM EUN 62 Debugging rct et prete e to POT e eo aaa esas 63 Note PrOGeSsOIS ETE E eon ae a Oe 63 SoundObject Fibr ry inferret espere erre rep EAVES rei eR eR ER 64 lil blue Introduction oue weeds 64 USape xe eee ET USED Ue Re I V uU RE o Saat te et Pu eet ee 64 Parameter Automaton 0 edere a ces Ite Le e A ger Ended oo vet 65 Introduction teo o e er ede Ue eres IQ 65 Available Parameters 5 etr eir E D ER Ee Do Die 65 Assigning Parameters x seca ende e dtes ec or eoe e eee ee tee te es diesen 65 Score Timmehtne Mode sS certe tive eroe teret 66 Editing Autonmiations o eese eB IRE 66 Technical eet E ey 66 Command Blocks ee eee rn o See Ere EX E pe PER quee 67 Introductions c i iet ie let eee Neto Mee chan Sewanee OR e ERE A eias hawks 67 Basic pecu MTM 67 Available Commands essere dia ean a ence ence ee ee nene memes emen enean 67 Bs Reference ss eere e Te EAE EE GR ENS ETUR RT 69 Sound OBJECTS mi ies
23. Edit Project Tools Script Window Help Start Render From 0 0 score orchestra tables global udo project properties sound file User instrument Librar Orchestra Bl Instrument Library ig Granular m Vocoder ijen a c Editor Type orchestra Genericinstri Instrument Text Global Orchestra Global 5i keny linen 10 1 02 1 asig oscil kenv 440 1 outs asig asig Editing Instrument Try using blue s autocompletion feature like this type line and press ctrl Space Bar A pop up window will display all known opcodes that begin with line Once you select linen you will have a template to fill in the apropriate values If you need to remember the syntax for an opcode place the cursor over it and press Shift F1 If you have set correctly the Csound Documentation Directory the html help for the opcode will be displayed if available See the section Tnstalling blue on the main blue documentation F1 for details on setting up the C D R To define the oscillator table we will use ftgen and place the following code in the Global Orc tab for the instrument gitab ftgen 1 0 1024 10 1 125 Your First Project Instrument Editor Comments c Editor Type blue orchestra Genericinstrument Instrument Text Global Orchestra Global Score gitab ftgen 1 0 1024 10 1 Adding an FTable for the Instrument Placing things like tables in the global tabs inside the instruments makes
24. Manager ctm Peer HER REP REI EE PR cca Hd ER Ru 42 flog ERR 43 Bl ueShate etos te ss ban E Pav ve eee Ser POE ERE aS EO Eee 43 Code REPOSIOLY ms 44 Effects TAbtaty iir cte mE eer tede ore xe bots 45 ssoundte Editor dates iets aa erdt ete 45 Scanned Synthesis Matrix Editor 46 Font Viewer EE 48 ioo d eer ORE PO 49 Python Console ERE EDU EINER URS 50 Other Features oo EET PIU eie ove Pete Rer ae e Po ee tgo 51 AutoBackup and Recovery eme enemies 51 Sound Object 51 Auditioning SoundObjects cece cece cece cece 52 Importing ORC SCO and CSD Files 20 0 0 cece HH 53 Importing MIDI Files 2352 cos eret eset ertet rte e asec vats 53 Blue 4e EPI RR ch TOATE REEE 55 Command Line Options for blue 0 00 0 eee cee cence ee 56 2 Concepts biere oett Pp IR Epp re Op rc bati et ters ERI EE 57 Rendering ore et so eee bed eget eo aget E E er ERE 57 InttoductiOn i ionis te RR PRESE ERE EPEREGR ERR RE PERMERN ER PRERERE PRSE 57 RED tc HR Io E RUE E eU 57 SoundObjects i t betonte PR ERU epe aa bee dito re E ceased 58 Introduction ice ote e Mes eroe e eere pter ease 58 What 1is SoundObject cert ER
25. SoundObject as I m not interested in the note instrument paradigm it s the furthest thing from my mind I m focused on achieving a sound or on experimenting to see what is the sound of instrument code I ve just written And I want the flexibility to add more sounds on the timeline I don t want to break my concentration to go and think about numbering instruments writing notes moving the note around in time I want to see and work with it all of it in one place as that s what s going on in my mind It s also great practice too just writing alot of instruments I d imagine that the Sound SoundObject would be a useful tool for a person new Csound as it allows just working with instrument code Note you would still need to know the basics of how Csound works what is a CSD and understand how things in blue map the different parts if itself to the different parts of a CSD file Final Thoughts Thanks for reading the tutorial I hope this tutorial has helped to show how to use Sound SoundObject in blue as well as helped show some ways in which you might want to use it If you have any comments suggestions for improving this tutorial or questions please feel free to email meat lt stevenyi gmail com gt Thanks and good luck Steven 147 Part 11 Developers Information here for Developers Chapter 4 Plugins Note Processors Instruments Sound Objects 149 Chapter 5 Core Building blue Requirements
26. Tutorial 1 Note as a warning also because of the execution order if you reopen your piece and try the test button on a PythonObject that uses code from the initial PythonObjects and find that it s not generating notes it s because that code has yet to be entered into the memory space of the interpreter either individually running all of the PythonObjects that deal with class definitions and initialization or just pressing the play stop button to generate your score will get those objects interpreted and entered into the jython interpreter s memory Because of this alone I find I use the Python SoundObject more than I do using the external SoundObject if I was to use the external SoundObject and wanted work an even remotely similar manner I d have to come up with some strange hack to maybe write script in one external object have the execution of that object write that script into a file which would have to be reimported into other scripts not a horrible hack but enough for me to want to avoid especially when it s not necessary though if you re programming in a scripting language besides Python you would hack to work in a manner like this Usage For the PythonObject instead of using a print command to stdout to bring things back into blue you simply assign the variable score to the text string of your generated notes when the PythonObject is done processing blue gets whatever value is assigned to that variable and pa
27. Use the left panel to select a line by clicking on the row describing the line you wish to edit you ll know which one is select by the edit points showing up in the right panel showing the line To edit the color of the line double click in the left panel on the color box to the left of the Zak Channel column A color selection dialog will appear for the user to choose their desired color Enter the zak channel that you whish the signal to be written to under the Zak Channel column The min and max columns define the min and max values of the graph that the line is drawn in to the right However the min and max values can be different on a per line basis When editing the line in the right panel left clicking adds a point at the current cursor position Right clicking will delete a point when a point is under the cursor you can easilly tell this because the a point will change to red when the cursor is hovering over it You can move a point by left clicking and dragging 98 Reference NoteProcessors NoteProcessors are used in conjunction with soundObjects and are used post generation of the soundObject s noteList They are used to modify values within the noteList NoteProcessors can be added via the soundObject property dialog When a soundObject is selected on the timeline and if the soundObject supports noteProcessors you can add remove push up or push down noteProcessors on the property dialog Role in Score G
28. X value and x values 114 Reference Widget Replacement Key Value can be generated either in absolute or relative terms Text Field objectName Value from text field compile time only File Selector objectName If stringChannelEnabled 15 selected outputs a Csound string variable S var that can be updated at runtime if API is enabled if stringChannelEnabled is set to off outputs as a string without quotes at compilation time NOTES For the Label object you are able to style the label by using HTML To use this feature when setting the text of the label enter the HTML label within html tags such as lt html gt lt font size 1 gt My Label lt font gt lt html gt Presets Since 0 95 0 BlueSynthBuilder now has the capability to save and load presets These presets are for usage time and not design time and they save a snapshot of all of the values for the widgets They do not save x y coordinates or other configuration for the widget only the value You can add presets and folders of presets using the presets menu in the upper left of the BSB editor Each menu has an option for adding a folder or adding a preset to it You can also manage presets by using the Manage Presets button This will open up a dialog with a tree view of your presets allowing you to rename the presets and folders as well as reorganize by dragging and dropping You can remove presets and fold
29. above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject with time behavior set to scale 104 Reference The above is an example of random values and because it is random the results will be different on another processing pass Retrograde Processor Parameters none Reverses all the generated notes in time The following score il il il il A If processed with RetrogradeProcessor would result in il 1 5 0 5 1 11 140 025 2 il 0 5 0 5 3 11 0 0 005 5 44 which if re sorted by start time would result in 11 0 0 0 5 4 E O OARS EL 0 0352 iL Ieg Oreo 1 The p2 and p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject with time behavior set to scale Rotate Processor parameters noteIndex The RotateProcessor rotates the order of the notes making the noteIndex the first note For example a noteIndex of 2 means make the second note of the notes generated the first shifting the first note to the end With a noteIndex of 3 the following score aid 0 2 4 rli 2 2 2 11423 i152 4 Td 46 2 5 will become AX uy 2r 33 105 Reference il 11 il il NNN A NY As the third note now becomes the first If a negative number is given the number will count backwards as to what note should now become the first note With a noteIndex of 2 meaning Second note from the end the following score
30. all output to stdout as it looks before being processed by blue as well as showing all output to stderr Language neutral script library With the PythonLib for the Python SoundObject it s nice to have a portable way of keeping all of the scripts that can be used with blue along with blue if you happen to be carrying your work around with you I think that this ability would be fantastic for the external SoundObject already i have a method that returns the absolute path to the lib directory of blue with this I think it should be possible that before blue runs any script it could look for a lt BLUE_SCRIPT_LIB gt constant of some sort and do a text replace to put in the absolute path to the lib directory that way you could do something like from BLUE SCRIPT LIB myLibrary import as well as use a commandline like perl BLUE SCRIPT LIB myLibrary myProgram input infile Which would make the library accessible from any system the nice thing about something like this is that I could then include other people s script libraries and programs as part of the blue release or other people may wish to advertise that their scripts are usable within blue and have a place to install it in that is easily accessible on any blue system For example using the above convention if I have a blue work file that repeatedly calls a library that someone else developed I can put that library in my lib dir use the convention above and then say
31. all time values for start are from time zero within the SoundObject This is like taking a three notes you know one starts at the beginning one starts 1 second later and one starts 2 seconds later No matter where you put those three notes the relationship of that block of notes is the same one at the beginning 2 seconds later etc so it is with SoundObjects in blue When you make a script to generate notes have it start at time zero and let blue do the scaling and translation of time for the SoundObject blue was made this way so that no matter what you generate within the block the generated notes will start at the start of the SoundObject and will last the duration of the SoundObject A More Complex Example Now any script that has a commandline that can execute on a file will work with blue so as another example let s say you want to use Python and you re using the pmask library You have both of these installed on your system and you know they work fine because you ve tested them outside of blue Now let s say you wrote the following Python script which really was written by Hans Mikelson as aan example for using pmask taken from the CSound Magazine from pmask import density Mask UniformRandom M Up are 0 0 03 20 0 0 5 3 0 PowerSegment 0 0 08 20 0 1 0 3 0 duration Mask UniformRandom Dci ui 0 0 4 20 0 3 0 1 0 PowerSegment 0 0 0 8 20 0 5 0 1 0 frequency mask Mask
32. allow users to assign the track information to Csound named instruments If one is doing so one must quote the name i e use trumpet instead of trumpet without quotes otherwise the output will not be legal Csound SCO Default value is the number of the MIDI track Note Template Template note text to use for generating Csound SCO from the MIDI data The default note template is i lt INSTR_ID gt START DUR KEY lt VELOCITY gt By having note templates the user can massage the note information to work with any number of pfields that their instruments require The following values are allowed in the note template Table 1 3 Key Values Shortcuts Description INSTR ID The instrument ID assigned in the track settings START Start Time of Note 54 Getting Started Shortcuts Description lt DUR gt Duration of Note lt KEY gt MIDI key number lt KEY_PCH gt MIDI key number as Csound PCH lt KEY_OCT gt MIDI key number as Csound OCT lt KEY_CPS gt MIDI key number as CPS lt VELOCITY gt MIDI velocity number lt VELOCITY_AMP gt MIDI velocity number as amplitude The button labelled Reference on the dialog will pop open the above information for quick reference of the allowable replacement keys for note templates Trim Time This option will shift the generated SoundObject to the time of the first note and then take the generated notes for the track and
33. are created as defaults for the project unless a default blue file is found in the user s blue home directory in which case the settings from the default blue file are used Project Defaults Author Default author to use in new projects Mixer Enabled Enable using the blue Mixer in new projects by default Getting Started Playback T PB B HR Program Options VB General Project Defaults Text Colors Playback utility Realtime Render Disk Render Time Pointer Animation Rate 205 Playback Time Pointer Animation Rate Rate of animation for time pointer to update when playing back in realtime expressed in frames per second For example the default value of 20 means the time pointer is updated 20 times per second giving a smooth animation rate Slower values may be desirable on slower computers if the playback pointer is affecting performance Latency Correction Float value in seconds to use as a correction for audio latency in the user s sound playback mechanism For example if latency is quite bad on your soundcard and there is a delay of 5 seconds between when audio is passed to your soundcard and when the audio is actually realized from the DAC the visual time pointer for blue Getting Started may appear ahead in time of what is being heard Using a 5 value for latency correction would correct for this IIBER Program Options General Project Defaults Text Colors Playpack Utili
34. area and the track properties editor The top tool bar has a button which adds new tracks to the Tracker a Steps entry widget to enter in the number of steps the Tracker should have a toggle for using Keyboard Note mode see below for more information an Octave entry widget to determine the relative octave for the Keyboard Note mode a Test button to see what the generated score will be for the Tracker as well as a help button that opens up a quick reference sheet for keyboard shortcuts 93 Reference The main tracking area is where all of the score work is done to enter and modify notes More information about note entry and modification is available below in the section Entering in Notes The last interface area is the track properties editor The track properties editor is held in a collapsible pane and when the tracker editor initially loads it will be collapsed To open up the track properties at least one track needs to be added to the tracker Once one track exists click the small button above the right scroll bar to open and close the track editor properties More information on using the properties editor follows below in the section Settings Things Up Setting Things Up When the Tracker Object is edited it is completely blank To start click the button to add as many tracks as you would like to use After adding the number of tracks you d like to use you will need to configure the track to work with your Cs
35. as this will cause two t statements to exist in the generated CSD the hand entered one and the one generated by blue causing unexpected performance results Quick Time Dialog Quick Time Dialog Start Time 1 5 Subjective Duration 2 0 While in the main timeline area pressing ctrl t when a soundObject is selected will bring up the quick time dialog Here you can edit the start time and duration of the currently selected soundObject When the dialog is first popped up the start time field is automatically focused for editing You can press tab to switch between the two fields Pressing enter will update the properties Pressing escape closing the dialog or clicking anywhere outside of the dialog will cancel any changes and close the dialog Score Time Properties Snap Snap Enabled 1 0 Time Display Time Number In the upper right of the Score window is an arrow button pressing this reveals the time properties for the Score The two options here are Snap and Time Display Snap provides a grid by which to line up your 22 Getting Started SoundObjects Snap is measured in beats Time Display allows setting how the time bar shows numbers i e every 4 beats rendered as a number or as a time value Shortcuts for the SoundObject LayerGroups Table 1 1 Shortcuts for the Timeline Shortcuts Description ctrl c copy selected soundObject s ctrl x cut selected soundObject s ctrl click pa
36. cmask Sinfile Soutfile nGen Homepage http mustec bgsu edu mkuehn ngen Author Mikel Kuehn Comandline to use ngen Sinfile Soutfile GenericScore Accepts NoteProcessors yes Contains a block of Csound score text The objective time within the GenericScore starts at time 0 and notes within the genericScore are written relative to 0 The start time of the GenericScore object within the timeline will translate the score text s time and the SoundObject s time behavior will determine how the notes are processed relative to the GenericScore s duration For example for the following score If this SoundObject is moved to start at time 2 0 with duration 6 0 the generated score will be iL 72 232 89045 74 Reference H H Bo Oo D NON NON w aun Note Score blocks support only a subset of the Csound Score Syntax Using in p2 and in pfields as well as and gt is supported Instance Accepts NoteProcessors yes A SoundObject that points to a SoundObject in the SoundObject library The content of the SoundObject is not editable except by editing the SoundObject in the library to which the instance is pointing to If editing the SoundObject in the library all instances that point to that SoundObject will be changed When clicking on an Instance object to edit it the SoundObject from the library will show its editor instead in the SoundObject edit area but it will be clearly marked that th
37. enjoy using the blue environment but this was a case where I needed to do some work by programming and the existing tools didn t exist in blue The process was pretty experimental and the use of compiled languages like Java would have been slower than using a scripting language as the prototypes for the object model I was building were changing rapidly What ended up happening is that I worked in Python within blue using the Python SoundObject developing my core objects and was then able to rapidly experiment with composing with these objects by using other Python SoundObjects which used my core class definitions moving them around visually and listening to how the musical output I could have done all of this outside of blue strictly using script but the visual element and the ease of quickly copying blocks of Python script and moving them around made experimentation much quicker and more apparent to me A great benefit out of all of this is now I have a prototype which I can then perhaps use to program SoundObjects for blue in Java maybe adding a GUI to the object to control parameters making the process of using the SoundObjects that much easier The total process of prototyping and experimenting was a great experience as I felt that each part of the process functioned to help me best express what I was going after I used script to quickly create the objects I wanted to use to model the musical model I had in mind and then used blue to experi
38. express a musical idea in Csound Beyond each SoundObject s unique capabilities SoundObjects do share common qualities name start time duration end time Most will also support a Time Behavior Scale Repeat or None which affects how the notes generated by the SoundObject will be adjusted if at all to the duration of the SoundObject Most will also support NoteProcessors another key tool in Csound for manipulating notes generated from a SoundObject All SoundObjects also support a background color property used strictly for visual purposes on the timeline PolyObjects Michael Bechard 2005 Revision History Revision 1 0 2005 05 05 First version of article Introduction PolyObjects are in my opinion one of the most powerful tools in blue They provide encapsulation of any grouping of SoundObjects any way you like into one logical SoundObject Once encapsulated the rest of blue s powerful features namely NoteProcessors can be leveraged against the PolyObject and that is when one really begins to realize the benefits of using PolyObjects 58 Concepts Basic Explanation Usage To repeat what is stated in the reference documentation a PolyObject can be seen as a container of other SoundObjects It contains its own series of SoundLayers just like the main score and like the main score one can add as many SoundLayers and SoundObjects as one likes to a PolyObject Think of the main score as a big box tha
39. generate a score to add to your piece now in experimenting you might have to 1 Create your csound score 2 Create your input file for the external score generator in another file 3 Run the score generator 4 Copy the generated score into your csound score file 5 Repeat process as you experiment Now imagine that process to the nth degree if you decide to use multiple external programs However with blue you can do all of that in one environment You could write your standard csound scores as well as your input to your chosen score generator within blue press the play button and then have blue do the work of going out to compile the score generator material and bring it back in integrate it with your csound score and output a single unified score file You get the benefit of using the visual timeline to move your generated score blocks around in time as well as only having to concentrate on the score input to the score generator leaving all of the tedious work to blue to handle Or say you re working on a score generating library in a scripting language Now that you ve finished it you want to start working with it but say you want to also do standard csound scores along with your scripts having to do the two in the single scripting environment might not be optimal as you would constantly have to use print functions or use note objects when it might just be easier to write il 0 1 23 45 and work with that for some of your w
40. hilight it and show it s properties in the property editor You can also then drag the widget around to place as you desire 112 Reference You may select multiple widgets by shift clicking them or by clicking on an empty part of the edit panel and dragging a marquee to select a group of widgets After selecting multiple widgets you can drag them around as a group as well as use the alignment and distribution options found on the right side bottom to tidy up the UI Usage Mode Instrument Editor Comments Blue Synth Builder Interface Code 0 35503 Once in usage mode users can configure the instrument by working with the UI widgets rotating knobs moving sliders etc The values of the different UI widgets will be reflected in the generated Csound instrument and will affect the values in realtime if using the Csound API Code Editor The code editor is where the Csound instrument code is to be written To use the values from the widgets use the replacement key of the widget within lt gt s and that value will be replaced when the instrument is generated the replacement key is usually the objectName of the object see table below 113 Reference For example if there s a knob with an objectName of amplitude and the value is set to 0 5 the following instrument code iamp amplitude Odbfs aout vco2 iamp 440 outs aout aout will generate the following instrument iamp 0 5 O
41. how the values entered into this column will be interpreted By default output frequencies is enabled meaning when the tracker goes to generate notes it will take the blue PCH values that are entered and convert them to a frequency value in hertz If you deselect this option the tracker will pass the blue PCH value out This option should generally be left enabled unless the user is planning to do further operation on the pch values via NoteProcessors that work with blue PCH Using blue PCH data will be verified on entry and increment decrement value options will work in the same way as for PCH MIDI MIDI will limit the values entered to whole number integers from 0 127 Using the increment and decrement value shortcuts will add or subtract 1 to the value String The String type allows the user to input any value they want No verification is done on entry and the increment decrement value shortcuts will have no effect Number The Number format will limit the values entered to only numbers Values can be further restricted to a given range as well as to only use whole number integers Using the increment and decrement value shortcuts will add or subtract to the value Entering in Notes Entering in data into the tracker is much like entering data into any other table though learning the keyboard shortcuts will vastly speed up entering and modifying data To begin click anywhere on a track where you would like to add a note Now b
42. ie gk var lt INSTR_NAME gt Available within instruments and some SoundObjects RENDER START The start time of rendering Does not take into account time warping of score Available in Global SCO text area 55 Getting Started Variable Value lt RENDER_START_ABSOLUTE gt The start time of rendering Takes into account time warping of score Available in Global SCO text area lt PROCESSING_START gt The time value when always on effects instruments need to start Calculated as the time value of the first soundObject that is not a FrozenSoundObject or Comment Available in Global SCO text area Command Line Options for blue To view the options that blue has from the commandline type blue help After that you should see information printed to the console Some of these flags are used by the Netbeans Platform that blue is built upon The following are ones blue uses itself c compile arg o output arg The flags above allow for commandline compilation of a blue project into a CSD Both flags must be set to work An example of usage is blu csomeFile blu ooutput csd This will use somefile blue and produce output csd The generated CSD will use the Disk Render settings for the project Using the commandline option for compiling blue projects is useful for automating builds of projects using a build system like Make Rake Ant or other tool 56
43. in blue is the Sound SoundObject which allows for the direct writing of instruments in the score It s origin came a long time ago now when I was first beginning to create more soundObjects for blue I was thinking of what exactly should be possible for a soundObject thinking that if someone were to make a soundObject they should be able to also embed instruments and f tables that they ll know will always be generated and available The case which I was thinking about at the time were non generic soundObjects like a drum machine where the soundObject would not only have a GUI to develop pattern tracks for different drum sounds but also would be able to furnish the instruments and f tables needed to generate those sounds the idea being that one could release a soundObject that a user could use straight out of the box no instrument writing or tables required That design decision eventually lead me to the conception of the Sound SoundObject which uses those mechanisms that were put in place for all soundObjects Theoretically I was very fascinated with the possibility of writing instruments within the main scoring area mixing note blocks with pure sound blocks It became possible to really compose with the sound in a very direct manner saying things like I want a sine wave here with this envelope then a triangle wave here and on top of that i want a processed sample sound to come in here now had a direct translation You didn t need to write the
44. interfere with other instances of the same module Differences between Cecilia and CeciliaModule Modifications required for Cecilia Modules to run in CeciliaModule Cecilia modules require at least one modification before they are able to run in blue and also must adhere to a few more constraints of design Appending ftable in Instrument Definitions Instruments are required to append the word ftable before any number that is meant to be an ftable For example instr 1 aout oscil 10000 440 1 out aout aout endin 70 Reference would have to become instr 1 aout oscil 10000 440 ftablel out aout aout endin The purpose of this is so that blue will know what ftable references will need to be updated when blue reassigns ftable numbers Comment Accepts NoteProcessors no Used to add comment text on the timeline and does not generate any notes ClojureObject clojure object Process On Load Test lffuse clojure string join 10 3 defn pchadd base interval vector base 0 quot interval 12 base 1 rem interval 12 6 defn arpeggiate totalDur instr dur basepch intervals amp score template isod notes cycle ss Q1 Accepts NoteProcessors yes Allows using the Clojure http www clojure org programming language to generate score data The Clojure interpreter is included with Blue so ClojureObjects are portable betwe
45. objects At a high level each Pattern layer has one SoundObject assigned to it The SoundObject is the source score material for a Pattern Layer Selecting boxes in the grid that shows for the Patter Layer determines where that score material will be used to generate notes For music projects that rely on patterns and regular metered time using the Pattern Layer Groups can be more efficient for creating a piece than using SoundObject Layer Groups The grid of time for Pattern Layers is currently hardcoded to repeat every four beats or one measure at 4 4 time However a SoundObject is not constrained to generate score for only one measure For example you can create a PianoRoll that has a time behavior of None and have it last sixteen beats four measures Everywhere that the pattern grid is selected for the Pattern Layer that uses that SoundObject will then create that sixteen beat score and start it at the time of the grid box Edit SoundObject PianoRoll Copy SoundObject to Buffer External GenericScore ObjectBuilder PianoRoll RhinoObject TrackerObject Patterns Layer Menu Options By default new Pattern Layers will use a GenericScore SoundObject that is set to a duration of four beats and use a time behavior of None This means that the score will generate as is In the layer s popup menu options you can replace the SoundObject that is being used for the layer with one from the SoundObject buffer i e copied from bl
46. of Python or perl script Also you can approach building scripts for tools as also being prototypes for building fully qualified blue SoundObjects and noteProcessors in Java which has the added benefit of being able to have a GUI added to it so if you have a utility script you use often suggesting it to a Java programmer could lead to it s inclusion into blue where it could be remade in a way to have it be usable by non programmers as well Future Enhancements As blue has developed over time and as the ways to use it are being augmented with each new build I m always looking for new ways to make the process of working with blue easier My recent work with the Python SoundObject and the External SoundObject have shown me that there s a lot of neat things that can be done with blue things I really didn t account for when I first built blue and would now love to handle For the future in addition to developing more and more tools for blue itself it would be nice to be able to have more conventional coding tools to aid scripters in the script work for blue I m aware of 142 Tutorial 1 the limitations for debugging and console output right now in blue but then again all of the scripting additions to blue are rather young and blue s development continues every day For immediate goals I ve written down the following as things I should look into now Python test console for the PythonObject Like the test button but would show
47. or copy paste them using the popup menu Dragging a folder is useful if you have a set of UDO s you commonly use in all of your instrument designs As UDO s may depend on other UDO s the order in which they are generated can be significant The UDO s in the table are generated from top down To shift the order of the opcodes up and down select an opcode in the table and use the and V buttons to push up and push down To edit the UDO select one from the table After selecting a UDO the UDO Editor will be populated with that UDO This time no green border will show as that is only done when a Library UDO is being edited Notes on Editing UDO s For UDO s you will need the name of the UDO the intypes and outtypes and the body of the code itself For the body of the code you will not need anything from the opcode line that normally starts a UDO definition i e opcode myOpcode a ak as those should be in the text fields for Opcode Name In Types and Out Types and you will not need an endop as blue will add that itself 26 Getting Started User Defined Opcode Repository Browser eoo User Defined Opcode Repository Browser Categories User Defined Opcodes Signal Generators TbDmp BE Signal Modifiers TbDmpk D Effects TbDmps TbDmpsk Lj Tomem SSCS D Panning and Spatialization TbPrmRnd TbPrmRndk L Uncategorized TekmDp TbToLin TbhToSF tieStatus User Defined Opcode User De
48. or on non Windows platforms when not using the Csound API Windows does not allow piping text to executable in a non blocking way and therefore limits what can be done when not using the API Motivation The motivation of Blue Live is primarily to aid the composer in working out ideas and to help configure instrument effects and mixer settings You may find it helpful early on within the life a composition when you want to try out a number of different ideas in realtime You may tweak instrument parameters mixer settings try out different notes and chords with a MIDI keyboard and even work with different SoundObjects Later when you have some ideas worked out you can take your SoundObjects from blueLive into your score timeline and continue working from there Beyond this primary capacity as a mode to aid composition Blue Live has some capacity to be used for realtime performance The focus of Blue Live s development is as a compositional aid first and performance second though work continues to expand its usefulness in both regards Working with Blue Live Blue Live is designed to work with the rest of your blue project file When Blue Live is turned on the blue project generates everything from the project except for the Score generated from the Score timeline The Global Score text will be used but instead of TOTAL DUR being calculated from the score timeline a default value of 3600 is used This allows your notes that would be
49. p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject with time behavior set to scale If you had used a regular AddProcessor and tried to transpose 7 scale degrees down using 07 you would have gotten 7 93 7 97 8 00 and 8 97 and the first few notes would have really be equal to 14 11 15 01 and 8 00 in pch notation This is due to the way that Csound pch notation works to hold the scale degree from 0 11 in the two fields to the right of the period Pch Inversion Processor Parameters value pfield 102 Reference This noteProcessor flips all values in designated pfield about an axis value The values that are read in the given pfield will be interpreted as Csound pch format The following score i102 8 00 il 8 04 rl 8 07 il 9 00 If processed with a PchInversionProcessor with value 8 06 and pfield 4 would result in il 0 0 0 5 9 0 it 0 5 0 5 8 08 il 1 0 0 5 8 05 it 1 5 0 5 8 0 The p2 and p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject with time behavior set to scale Python Processor Parameters code Allows user to write python code to process NoteList The code is run using Jython the Java implementation of Python that is included with blue Users using the PythonProcessor should be aware of Jython s implementation details most classes and modules from CPython are included users can not import modules with native libraries and users can use any Java cla
50. right click where you want to paste the copy and select Paste You should now have two objects like in figure 7 128 Your First Project File Edit Project Tools Script Window Help Start Render From 2 0 5 orchestra tables global uda project properties sound file root Mute Sola 0 00 0 05 Notes Generico Genel Generic Editor Type blue soundObject Genericscare i1 0 1 Copying SoundObjects You can use the snap feature to move the objects by fixed values press the button on the upper right corner of the timeline to open the snap properties Enable snap to 1 second Fig 8 You can also configure the timeline time display to show numbers instead of time This is useful if you set the tempo using a t statement and want blue to display numbers instead of time values 129 Your First Project File Edit Project Tools Script Window Help Start Render From 0 0 raat Mute Solo 10 00 Notes EIEI Genericscore Editor Type blue soundObject Genericscore Setting Timeline Options Now move and shape the objects so the first starts at 0 with a duration of 5 seconds and the second starts at 10 again with a duration of 5 It s always good to check using test to make sure things are how you want them to be Now to produce sound we will first check the global settings Go to the project properties tab by pressing ctrl 6 Here you can set the p
51. safely apply NoteProcessors to it that affect that p field Group co reliant notes together into PolyObjects Co reliant notes in this case would be notes that rely on each other to make their sound For instance if you had a group of notes that fed their output to a zak channel then another note to process and play that 62 Concepts channel s sound those notes would be co reliant The reason to do this is to try to make each SoundObject in the main score independent so that one can move remove and edit each of them without worrying about affecting other notes The PolyObjects effectively begin to represent one atomic sound in your score making it easier to experiment with Doing this also allows one to reliably freeze PolyObjects If one tried to freeze a PolyObject that did nothing but write its output to a zak channel the resulting sound file would be dead silence and the score would never work since a frozen sound does nothing but read and play a sound file Wait what about separating dissimilar notes That s still possible with co reliant but dissimilar notes What one would do to use the example in the previous section is make a PolyObject that contained the instrument processing the zak channel output and another embedded PolyObject The embedded PolyObject would then contain all of the actual notes writing to the zak channel Now what you can do is apply all kinds of NoteProcessors to the embedded PolyObject th
52. shift them all so that the first note starts at time 0 so that there is no empty time at the beginning of the track s note information After finishing configuring settings for the imported MIDI data blue will generate the notes with one SoundLayer per MIDI track and on each SoundLayer it will contain one GenericScore SoundObject containing the converted MIDI score Note The current implementation does not handle cases where there are overlapping notes of the same MIDI note number within the same track and results are unpredictable Also only MIDI files where time is PPQ is supported at the moment non SMPTE Users wanting support for either of these cases or have other ideas they would like implemented are requested to make feature requests on the blue mailing list or to use the help menu Request a Feature option Blue Variables Blue treats special text as special Blue variables Below is a list of those variables Table 1 4 Variable Value lt TOTAL_DUR gt Duration of the generated score from the timeline Available in Global SCO text area lt INSTR_ID gt Replaces with instrumentId if the instrument is a named instrument value is quoted Generally used when creating notes Available within instruments and some SoundObjects lt INSTR_NAME gt Replaces with instrumentId if the instrument is a named instrument the value is not quoted Generally used when working with ORC code to give a variable a unique ID
53. that is automatically assigned to the duration of the ClojureObject If the ClojureObject is set with a start time of 0 and a duration of 4 then it will generate the following score il id il 251 il id il 1 il id il il il il il il WWWWNNNNFRFRRFRFP gt 0 0 25 8 00 12 25 0 25 8 04 12 HOON 2558007 12 75 0 25 8 04 12 0 0 25 8 00 12 25 0 25 8 04 12 22 10 25 8 07 12 h 03 25 84 04 12 0 0 25 8 00 12 25 0 25 8 04 12 9 105 25 8207 2 75 0 25 8 04 12 0 0 25 8 00 12 25 0 25 8 04 12 022 5 78207 12 75 0 25 8 04 12 Regarding Processing Blue processes soundObjects by going through each SoundLayer and generating score for each object within each layer This is useful to know so that if you are using a ClojureObject that has utility functions that you later use in other ClojureObjects you should put that utility ClojureObject on the first SoundLayer closest to the top or at least on a layer above all others that contain ClojureObjects Also to note as a feature Blue uses a single interpreter instance for processing Clojure code Therefore if one ClojureObject has code evaluated the values from that code can be read by other objects This allows 72 Reference creating utility ClojureObjects However one can use stale values or values from another project even if one is not careful to always assign values in the project that require being set for this p
54. the instance object on the timeline and pasting in more instances These instances can be placed anywhere have different durations and time behaviors as well as have their own individual noteProcessors This allows expressing ideas such as This is an instance of the primary motive soundObject in the library but transposed up a major 3rd retrograded and inverted or an idea like I ve got drum pattern A in the library and I have instances of it here and here and Note When copying and pasting Instance soundObjects they are all pointing to the soundObject in the library 64 Concepts 4 You also then make instances of soundObjects in the library by opening up the SoundObject Library dialog available from the Window menu or by using the F4 shortcut key There you have the following options Copy This makes a copy of the selected SoundObject and puts it in the buffer This is a copy of the original soundObject and not an Instance After copying to the buffer you can paste as normal on the timeline Copy Instance This makes a Instance of the selected SoundObject and puts it in the buffer This Instance will point to the original soundObject After copying to the buffer you can paste as normal on the timeline Remove This will remove the selected SoundObject from the library 5 You can also then edit the soundObject in the library from within the SoundObject Library dialog by selecting the soundObject in the lis
55. they are in the PolyObject There are advantages and disadvantages to each method The first is good because it allows one to see the actual length of the PolyObject within the main score but you have to remember to click Set Subjective Time to Objective Time each and every time you make a change to the PolyObject s contents If you set the Time Behavior to None the length of the PolyObject may appear to be two beats but it may actually be ten or 20 or whatever you don t know until you edit the contents of that PolyObject However with a Time Behavior of None you can edit the contents of the PolyObject frequently and drastically without having to worry if your changes will be accurately represented in the CSD rendering A good way to work may be to set a new PolyObject s Time Behavior to None and edit the contents of it as much as you like Then when it sounds satisfactory you can click Set Subjective Time to Objective Time on it so that you may edit the rest of the score while having an accurate picture of the actual length of the PolyObject Keep in mind that you may use the Set Subjective Time to Objective Time feature on any SoundObject with any Time Behavior setting Repeat Looping Time Behavior One can lay down a series of sounds in a PolyObject and setup the PolyObject to loop them The Time Behavior of the PolyObject itself needs to be set to Repeat and the notes will loop for as long as the PolyObject s length When the PolyObje
56. to test out single SoundObject ideas or see how a few different SoundObjects 52 Getting Started sound together without having to mute solo different SoundLayers To use this feature select desired SoundObjects for testing right click on a selected SoundObject and from the SoundObject popup menu choose Audition SoundObjects You can also initiate the audition by using the ctrl shift a shortcut or by going to the Project menu and choosing Audition Selected SoundObjects To stop auditioning click anywhere on the Score timeline Importing ORC SCO and CSD Files Notes blue is able to import ORC SCO and CSD files and set up a blue project file with instruments parsed out and put into the orchestra manager project settings set etc Currently there are three options to choose from when importing a CSD file all relating to how you would like to import the notes from the CsScore section Import Score to Global Score all score goes to the Global Score section Import All Score to Single SoundObject all score goes into a single GenericScore SoundObject The duration of the soundObject will be set to the duration of the imported score This is broken up into different soundObjects and layers if sections s statement are found in the score Import Score and Split into SoundObjects by Instrument Number score is split by instrument number and a different GenericScore soundObject will be created for each block of score text pe
57. used for effects instruments to run for 3600 seconds this size can be modified please make a request if desired The main toolbar has four buttons for blue Live 38 Getting Started blueLive Toggle button that stops and starts blueLive Recompile If blueLive is running this button will cause blue to recompile the CSD from your project and restart blueLive This is useful if you modify your orchestra code and want to quickly recompile and continue working with blueLive All Notes Off Turns off any score notes that are actively playing MIDI Input Toggle button that turns on and off the configured MIDI devices setup in Program Options discussed further below The primary Blue Live window is available from the Window Menu or by using the ctrl 8 shortcut The Blue Live window has three main tabs the Live Space the SCO Pad and Options These will be discussed int he following sections Live Space The Live Space is an area to work with SoundObjects It is a table divided into bins and rows of spaces to place SoundObjects SoundObjects can be copied to from the Score Timeline as well as the Live Space SoundObjects can also be created within the Live Space by right clicking an empty bin within the bins and choosing Add SoundObject from the popup menu Clicking on an occupied bin will select that SoundObject The properties for the SoundObject can be modified using the SoundObject Properties Window and the contents of the Soun
58. useful for setting an initial value for the Effect 35 Getting Started Effects Library Effects Library Reverhs Inputs Outputs E gh Interface Code Comments ainl ainz xin TIS aout reverbsc aini ain2 lt agouti ainl lt wetdrye aauti aout ain lt wetdry gt caout agut 1 aoute In the code editor for the Effect one sees that the xin and xout lines of the User Defined opcode display according the number of in and out audio signals the Effect will support The names of the signals are hard coded which makes it easier for others to know exactly what the incoming and outgoing signals will be should they look at your code Code for the Effect should follow the same principles as User Defined Opcodes i e one can add a setksmps line at the top of the code area Values from the widgets follow the same principles as BlueSynthBuilder and code completion for opcodes ctrl space and BSB widgets ctrl shift space work within the code editor Getting Started Note blue currently expects Effects to have nchnls number of channels in and out where nchnls is the number set by the project Other Notes The Extra Render Time option in the Mixer dialog allows the user to add extra time to the end of the score This is useful to allow time for Effects which may have time delay i e 3 second long reverb to have time enough for processing as well as simply to
59. value from that variable and continue processing Example temp wu for i in range 4 temp il d 1 s Ss n S i 8 0 str i 80 Score temp The above example script will generate four notes at ascending half steps If the PythonObject is set with a start time of 0 and a duration of 2 then it will generate the following score il 0 0 0 5 8 00 80 il 0 5 0 5 8 01 80 il 1 0 0 5 8 02 80 IT 532025 8403480 Regarding Processing Blue processes soundObjects by going through each SoundLayer and generating score for each object within each layer This is useful to know so that if you are using a PythonObject that has utility functions that you later use in other PythonObjects you should put that utility PythonObject on the first SoundLayer closest to the top or at least on a layer above all others that contain PythonObjects Also to note as a feature Blue uses a single interpreter instance for processing python code Therefore if one PythonObject has code evaluated the values from that code can be read by other objects This allows creating utility PythonObjects However one can use stale values or values from another project even if one is not careful to always assign values in the project that require being set for this particular project Variables from blue The following variables are avaialable from blue Variables from blue blueDuration Duration of the Python SoundObject blueProjectDir The location of the c
60. you should download the latest ZIP file or DMG from the blue Sourceforge page here http www sourceforge net projects bluemusic For OSX users download the DMG file which contains a blue app You can double click the Application to run as well as copy it to your Applications folder to install it For Linux and Windows users download the ZIP file and unzip it Inside of the bin folder you will see a blue script for Linux or a blue exe file for use on Windows Note After starting blue you may want to explore the example projects and pieces found in the blue example folder or right click and explore contents of blue app example if on OSX Platform Specific Notes The section below has notes for individual platforms Mac OSX Linux Blue uses the right mouse click often to show popup menus If you do not have a right mouse button you can use ctrl click for all rt clicks that are mentioned in this documentation To make use of the function key shortcuts F1 F12 you will need to go into System Preferences choose Keyboard then enable Use all F1 F2 etc keys as standard function keys For 64 bit systems you may run into issues when running blue with the API enabled where modifying widget values is not reflected in performance This is likely due to the Csound Java API being compiled with SWIG 2 0 As of the time of this writing the version of Csound in Debian Stable for amd64 is compiled with SWIG 1 3 0 and does not w
61. 1 while for the Tuning processor there is no difference The tuning processor takes everything from the right side of the decimal and converts that to an integer to figure out the scale degree If you enter in a scale degree higher than the number degrees in the scale it will be converted as if the octave is raised For example in a 19 tone scale an input of 8 21 would get converted to 9 1 Instruments managed by the orchestra manager the instruments are generated into the lt CsOrchestra gt section of the CSD file Generic Instrument A generic editor for Csound instruments Insert your instrument text in the editor without instr or endin as they re not necessary and will be generated by blue Python Instrument Use Python code to generate Csound instrument text Rhino Instrument Use JavaScript code to generate a Csound instrument blueX7 Note This instrument is currently undergoing re implementation A 6 Operator Phase Modulation instrument using Russell Pinkston s DX7 Emulation Patches 109 Reference The blueX7 editor contains two tabs the patch tab where the sound creation parameters are tweaked and a second tab called csound which can contain further post processing algorithms or special routing of the instrument s output The patch tab contains three panels Common LFO and operators The common panel deals with global aspects of the instrument like transposition FM algorithm us
62. 4 BA 00 Exponent Remove Parameter Change Parameter Type Push Wp Push Down G Quantize T 1 1 Accumulator m Probability Beta The JMask SoundObject Editor allows for viewing the editors for all of the assigned parameters Parameters are each set to generate values for one pfield On the left hand side of each row is the Parameter Edit Panel This panel shows a number at the top that corresponds to what pfield this parameter will generate values for To change things about the Parameter right clicking the panel will show a popup menu as shown in the image above The options are described below Parameter Edit Options Add Parameter Before Create a new Parameter and insert it before the Parameter clicked on by mouse When this option is selected a dialog will appear with a dropdown of options of what type of Parameter to add 77 Reference Add Parameter After Remove Parameter Change Parameter Type Push Up Push Down Mask Quantizer Accumulator Create a new Parameter and insert it after the Parameter clicked on by mouse When this option is selected a dialog will appear with a dropdown of options of what type of Parameter to add Remove this Parameter Will not be allowed if trying to edit parameters 1 3 as JMask requires a minimum of 3 pfields Choose a different type of Parameter and replace the current one with the selected one Any edits from the old Pa
63. Multiply Processor ug E e REN ua 101 Peh Add ProGessor 5 ois rere her SERE Eee texere EYE DERE t Sever NES 102 Peh Inversion Processor mascordi ene a E E a eee en e e e e e eese sees 102 Python Processors tebe Inte eco eie eene Qa Ge erede 103 Random Add Processor aer be er e o RU E Pee da 103 Random Multiply Processor aseeseen es ee m He meme hen 104 Retrograde Processor isi doo ec RR e Wee de de ete orte ed etd 105 Rotate Processor Sete ia I ERE R E had oe Net Be 105 Sublist Processor iu WR SER ou si eS eee Ee PEERS Pee ER e EV a een 107 Switch PrOCESSOL eres as need ore stude ea EO dee nokta eek IP Pes ee des 107 Tame Warp Processor o or SUE E ap eee eq rete edd 108 TunimgPrOCeSSOE TL des eoe teens seed e 108 T 109 Generic Instr m nt x rec ea dere eU o bee dence Meee tek 109 Python Instrument 3 3 ore eoe NEU d n ee ea ev PRSE E ee 109 iv blue Rhino Tristrument hr ree ER E PER e ston E AENEAS 109 ae p o asm LS NI 109 BluesSynthBullder TL 111 SASCHA 116 AL Introduction to Csou nd en ns e e teet ire tendit Sen perpe ester E POR 119 B Breaks in Backwards Compatibility esses He 120 Glossary AM M EEUU 121 IL RI UE UE CIN 122 Your First Project E T 123 Dutorial Tirah
64. Object for any number of instruments a flexibility which allows for soundObjects to be more representative of musical ideas and nor does it bind SoundLayers to channels the abstraction of the musical system and the interaction with the Mixer system requires different handling In blue s Mixer system Mixer channels are automatically bound to instruments by their instrument ID Binding to ID and not per instrument in the Orchestra allows for the case where users have set multiple instruments to the same instrument ID but only having one which is enabled If you then disable one and then enable another instrument to test out different instruments with the same musical note data the mixer channel s settings will be maintained for the new instrument as it is bound by ID Channels in themselves can not be created or removed directly by the user but are automatically added or removed depending on how how instruments are added and removed from the project s orchestra For cases of when an instrument has an ID and a user wishes to change the ID if the new ID already exists and a channel is already created the old channel is removed as long as no other instrument has the old ID If the new channel ID has no existing mixer channel bound to it and if the channel for the old ID only has one instrument with that ID the instrument that is changing ID s the bound mixer channel is simply reassigned to the new ID and maintains its settings Subchannels are add
65. Options settings on OSX it is the application s Preferences on other platofrms it is the Options menu item in the Tools menu and under blue go to MIDI There you will see a list of MIDI devices connected to your computer If you connected a device after starting blue you can rescan to find your MIDI device In this window you will configure what MIDI devices you want to use with blue but these devices will not be opened for listening until you enable MIDI Input on the blueLive toolbar in the main application Once you have configured what devices to use with blue return to the main program and enable MIDI input using the MIDI Input button then start blueLive At this point when MIDI notes are played blue will take the incoming note data map it according to the values configured in the MIDI Input Panel window available from the Windows Menu and then generate notes and pass them to Csound For a MIDI note on blue will the channel number of the note and map it to the instrument in the orchestra manager by index For example if you have three instruments numbered 1 3 and 5 notes for MIDI channel 1 will generate with instr 1 notes for MIDI channel 2 will generate with instr 3 and notes for MIDI channel 3 will generate with instr 5 The MIDI key number as well as the velocity will be mapped according to the settings set in the MIDI Input Panel window This allows for generating frequency Csound PCH and using Scala Tuning files to gen
66. Parameter Parameter 6 mM Parameter T Oscillator Sine Initial Phase Exponent 1 x Freque Interpolation Type o n Interpolation Value 0 Min m Probability Beta Beyond these basics for working with the Parameters in general each Parameter type has its own editor each customized for the values and options allowable for each Parameter Currently documentation is omitted for each Parameter s GUI as they correspond in feature and parameters as CMask and the user is encouraged to consult the CMask manual for more information on editing each Parameter This section will be expanded for the next release of blue LineObject Accepts NoteProcessors no 79 Reference x Line Min freq 20 cutoff 2 Line Object Add and graphically edit global k rate signals Use the bottom and buttons to add remove lines Use the table to select a line After selecting a line you can edit the points by dragging them add points by clicking where you want the new point and remove points by rt clicking them Use the table to edit the name of the signal as well as the max and min values need to be floating point values For editing the color of the line double click the color box to the left of the lineName A color selection dialog will appear for the user to choose their desired color The name of the signal will be prepended with gk when outputing a signal i e a line name of cutoff
67. Score text can be passed directly into a generated CSD by using the Global Orchestra and Global Score windows Global Orchestra Anything here will be inserted into the lt CsOrchestra gt section of the CSD file before anything generated by the Orchestra Things like global variables macros or GUI instrument definitions may go here Global Score Anything here will be inserted into lt CsScore gt section of the CSD file before anything generated by the score timeline the global score s processing is done outside of the score timelines so any notes put here are not factored into values calculated from the timeline like total duration nor are any notes in the global score section translated like the timeline is when a different start time is used other than 0 0 for instance if you use 2 0 as a start time a note in the score timeline at 2 0 will be translated to start at 0 0 while a note with a start time of 2 0 in the global score section is not affected and will start at time 2 0 There are also certain variables made available from blue blue variables that are useful for specific purposes One of them is lt TOTAL_DUR gt An example of its use is 120 0 lt TOTAL_DUR gt 10 95 1 1000 The note given above is for a global effect a global reverb unit This note will always start at time zero regardless of when the score starts and will always last as long as the duration of the generated score from the timeline plus 10 seconds
68. UniformRandom PowerSegment 0 0 3000 0 20 0 90 0 1 0 PowerSegment 0 0 5000 0 20 0 150 0 1 0 frequency Quantizer frequency mask LinearSegment 0 0 400 0 20 0 50 0 0 95 index Mask UniformRandom PowerSegment 0 0 2 0 20 0 3 0 1 0 PowerSegment 0 0 3 0 20 0 5 0 1 0 panorama 0 1 amplitude Lorenz x ss ScoreSection 0 0 20 0 1 density duration frequency index panorama amplitude 135 Tutorial 1 print str ss and you tested it outside of blue and it worked fine Well now you could create an external SoundObject in blue paste in this script set the commandline to python and now have the notes imported into blue Using a Score Generating Language Let s try a non scripting example now and use Mark Williamson s drum pattern scoring utility to generate a drum pattern available at http www junklight com Mark s utility is itself a perl script but it takes in a text file using a scoring language he developed copying in the example drum pat file into the scripting area instrumenti instrument2 instrument3 instrument4 instrument5 patternl 1 pattern2 1 pattern3 pattern4 patternd5 plistl1 1 ilistl 3 anerer bar length time error poly rhythm example loop 5 Wad 3l Wid 11 PRP PRP errer now now now Snow Snow 1 second 01 play 1 with 1 play 2 with 2
69. a print command of some sort in your script The external SoundObject s editor takes in two inputs a script and a commandline to run on that script technically when blue is in the score generating pass and comes to an external SoundObject the external SoundObject writes your script to a temp file then runs the commandline given either swapping Sinfile with the name of the temporary file generated or appending the name of the temporary file to the end of the commandline if no Sinfile is found A Simple Example Let s say you re writing a simple perl script print il 0 2 3 4 5 n and you for your commandline you use perl or perhaps usr bin perl Sinfile When blue goes to generate a CSD file and comes across your external SoundObject what will happen is that 1 Your script will get written to a temp file for this example let s say it s tmp temp4253 txt 2 blue executes the commandline given with that temp file 134 Tutorial 1 a For the first commandline it ll then run perl tmp temp4253 txt b For the second commandline it ll then run usr bin perl tmp temp4253 txt 3 perl runs and will print i1 0 2 3 4 5 n to stdout 4 blue will get that output from perl then bring that back in convert it to blue Note class 5 blue then will shift the note over to the start time of your external SoundObject then scale the note to the duration of the SoundObject And that s it Note In general
70. add time at the end of a piece Sends Besides effects users are also able to put in Sends into the pre and post fader Effects bins Sends will output the signal from that point in the channel s signal chain to a selected SubChannel As with the output channels Sends can only feed forward down the chain to the Master Out and can not be made to create a feedback loop Users are able to set the channel to send to as well as the amount to send This send amount is also able to be Automated just as the Effects are Randomization Widget values are able to be randomized in the same way as in the BlueSynthBuilder and is available in the usage mode when working with Effects in the Effects Library or when using Effects from the mixer Please further information please see the documentation for BlueSynthBuilder Widget Randomization Code Generation Optimization blue s mixer system optimizes when generated code for Csound to use When compiling down to ORC code blue checks all signal paths to see if any path will result in unused audio and if so will optimize out any code that is along that path The rules for optimization are as follows If channel does not generate signal to channel output if no automation for level fader and fader 06 0f only generate code up to last send in preFader effects chain When processing Sends checks down the graph to see if send signal will make it to the Master output or not checking both down graph of ou
71. ags to the program or script your script in a way that it will write out to stdout to the screen as that is what blue will capture and bring in as notes A second method for the external object was created for bringing in score data after running the commandline as some programs i e Cmask do not have any possible way to write directly to stdout The process is to use outfile in the commandline to pass in a filename to the program That outfile will be the name of a temp file that the external program will write score data into After the program is finished blue will open up that temp file read in the score data and then remove the temp file So if your program needed a commandline of something like myProgram i inputfilename o outputfilename and no options for writing to screen then you could use a commandline of myProgram i infile o outfile There is a test button that you may use to check to see that blue properly brings in the generated notes Command Lines and Notes Other Programs This is a list of commandlines to use when using other programs with blue and any notes that may concern other programs when being used with blue These commandlines assume that the programs being called are on the system path If not on the path please append the full path to the program before the program name Command Lines for Programs CMask Homepage http www kgw tu berlin de abart index html Author Andre Bartetzki Comandline to use
72. allow automation or change the Csound code so that it will work with the generated k rate signal Randomization Since 0 117 0 users are able to randomize values for widgets in a BlueSynthBuilder instrument To use first choose which widgets are set to be randomized in edit mode then in usage mode right click on the panel in an area not covered by a widget then select Randomize from the popup menu The following widgets are cable of being randomized Knob Horizontal Slider Vertical Slider Horizontal Slider Bank Vertical Slider Bank XY Controller Checkbox Dropdown List Shortcuts Table 3 6 General Shortcuts Shortcuts Description ctrl 1 brings the score tab into focus ctrl 2 brings the orchestra tab into focus ctrl 3 brings the tables tab into focus ctrl 4 brings the globals tab into focus ctrl 5 brings the project properties tab into focus ctrl 6 brings the soundfile tab into focus alt right brings the next manager tab into focus alt left brings the previous manager tab into focus F9 start stop a render equivalent to pressing the render stop button ctrl g generate a CSD file ctrl shift g generate a CSD to screen for previewing ctrl o open a work file ctrl s save work file must use Save as from file menu if a new work file ctrl w close the current work file alt F4 close blue 116 Reference Table 3 7 Rendering Sho
73. ameters TimeWarpString Warps time in the same way as Csound t statement but does not require t to be used Statements are in alternating pairs of beat number and tempo From the Csound Manual Time and Tempo for that time are given as ordered couples that define points on a tempo vs time graph The time axis here is in beats so is not necessarily linear The beat rate of a Section can be thought of as a movement from point to point on that graph motion between two points of equal height signifies constant tempo while motion between two points of unequal height will cause an accelarando or ritardando accordingly The graph can contain discontinuities two points given equal times but different tempi will cause an immediate tempo change Motion between different tempos over non zero time is inverse linear That is an accelerando between two tempos and M2 proceeds by linear interpolation of the single beat durations from 60 M1 to 60 M2 The first tempo given must be for beat 0 Notes on Usage Beat values for beat tempo pairs should related to the score before any time behavior is applied For example for the following score 3d Qo 123 4 Dh ober 3545 25 il Aid AS al 3 Le Se 3 35 if it is in a GenericScore SoundObject of duration 20 if you want the tempo to decrease in half by the last note you would enter a value for the processor as 0 60 3 30 and not 0 60 20 30 If you re using a time behavior of Repeat r
74. and doubles version of Csound The lib jcsound jnilib will be installed into Library Java Extensions If you are compiling your own version of Csound you can remove the symlink in Library Java Extensions and either symlink your your version there or copy it into that folder Checking the API is Enabled To check if the API is enabled open blue and open up the Program Options This is available from the Blue Preferences menu option on OSX and from the Tools gt Options menu option Windows and Linux Getting Started In the Blue tab under both Disk and Realtime Render settings there is an option called Render Method If Csound 6 is availble on your system and Blue was able to find it it will show a Csound 6 API option If it was not found but Csound 5 was found then a Csound 5 API option will show If neither could be found you will only have the Commandline Runner option which is always available Setting Up Program Options The first thing you ll want to do is set up your Program Options Some settings are required for features of blue to work i e Render Settings the Csound Documentation Root for opening opcode help others are there to help setup your project defaults and save you time when creating new projects To open up the Program Options dialog go to the File menu and click on Program Options General General Project Defaults Text Colors Program Options Playback Util
75. ant blue to process with the command in the following manner command to use Csound Orchestra Code i Available Commands once Once blocks are useful to limit how many times a block of code will be generated in the final CSD and is more for efficiency than anything else so Csound doesn t define the same ftable more than it has to for example An example of this 67 Concepts pre once gaLeft init 0 gaRight init 0 i In this case if the above gaLeft and gaRight init statement wrapped in a once block is used in multiple instruments then regardless it will be generated only once in the final CSD So a use case for the above would be if you have all of your instruments output to the above global variables for extra processing by an always on reverb you would want to add the above to all of the instruments and also the reverb Then if you start a new project and may want to reuse a few of your instruments as well as the reverb you can just copy them into your new project s orchestra and start working away knowing your global variables will be initialized and ready to go Pre blocks are useful if you need the enclosed ORC code to be generated before any other global orc code When blue goes to process the project to generate a CSD file it normally starts of the existing global orchestra code from the globals manager then appends all global orc from instruments and soundObjects to it one after t
76. arameter types in CMask is available in JMask Table 3 1 Parameter Types Type Description Constant Item List Generates values from a list of values given by the Generate the given value when generating values for notes user Options for generation include cycling through the list cycle going backwards and forwards through the list swing going through the list in random order using all values once before repeating heap and choosing a random list item random Segment Generates values along a user defined line Random Generates a random value Probability Oscillator Generates values that oscillate in a given period Generates a randomized value that is weighted by the given probability type and the configuration of the parameters of that probability type using different user chosen shapes Beyond the Parameters JMask supports the three modifier types found in CMask Masks Quantizers and Accumulators Certain parameters support different modifiers and their support by paramater type is listed below Table 3 2 Parameter Modifier Support Type Supports Mask Supports Quantizer Supports Accumulator Constant No No Yes List No No Yes Segment No Yes Yes Random No Yes Yes Probability Yes Yes Yes Oscillator Yes Yes Yes 76 Reference Using the JMask Interface Jhlask Ld Constant Constant 10 Constant 0
77. articular project Variables from blue The following variables are avaialable from blue Variables from blue blueDuration Duration of the Clojure SoundObject blueProjectDir The location of the current project s directory Includes path separator at end Process at Start There is a checkbox entitled Process at Start Selecting this option will have the script of the ClojureObject run when a blue project is loaded This is useful for scripts that act as library functions but themselves do not generate any notes For example you might define a number of score generation utility functions in one ClojureObject that has Process at Start enabled Your other ClojureObject may then use the functions from that ClojureObject Next time you load your project if that ClojureObject hasn t been run your other ClojureObject will not be able to be run either If you are rendering from the beginning of a project this won t be an issue but if you re starting work in the middle of a project you will need to evaluate that utility ClojureObject at least once You can either do a run from the start at least once use the Test button to have that evaluated or use Process at Start and have blue ensure it is loaded into the Clojure interpreter when you load your projects Using External CLJ Scripts Blue is able to load external clj scripts resolved from the blue script clojure or PROJECT_DIR script clojure directory For example if you use u
78. as a SoundObject moving it around on the timeline stretching it editing its properties etc This is very different from editing the contents of said PolyObject The distinction will be made in this section whenever applicable PolyObjects can have their Time Behavior changed like any other SoundObject when one is editing the actual PolyObject This is very important to keep in mind because your sounds within the PolyObject 59 Concepts may span 10 beats but if you leave the Time Behavior settings for the PolyObject to the default Scale they may in actuality span only two beats depending on the size of your PolyObject One can test this with the Test button shrink a PolyObject that has the Scale Time Behavior and the notes within it will shrink as well No Special Time Behavior There are a couple of easy ways to make sure that the sounds you place in a PolyObject remain to scale in the parent container or the root score One method is to right click on the PolyObject itself and click Set Subjective Time to Objective Time This will change the length of the PolyObject to be equal to the beat at the end of the last SoundObject within it In other words it will expand or contract to the actual total length of all of the notes within it The other method is to change the Time Behavior of the PolyObject to None Blue will not do any processing of the length of the notes within the PolyObject they ll just be played exactly the way
79. as they are after the Time Behavior change So in the previous example in order to get those results one has to change the ending beat in the LineAddProcessor to five instead of two because five is the beat at which the last note plays in the looped sequence Multi layered Polyobjects As mentioned previously PolyObjects can contain other PolyObjects The thing to remember when doing this is that each PolyObject s settings NoteProcessor s etc are local to itself For blue the notes generated from a PolyObject SoundObject are the same as the ones generated from a GenericScore or any other type of SoundObject and can be manipulated in the same way Best Practices Separate notes with dissimilar behavior into their own PolyObjects Let s say you re making a PolyObject with lots of regular notes whose p4 field represents the pitch At some point you also want to insert a note that affects something a bit more irregular like the phase of the other notes and its p4 field represents say the amount of variance in the phase It would be prudent to separate that irregular note away from the notes in this PolyObject in order to keep your expectations about the p field of the PolyObject as a whole consistent Without the irregular note you can safely say that p4 of PolyObject X or whatever its called represents the pitch of all of the notes it contains However with that extra note in it p4 has no consistent meaning in PolyObject X and you can t
80. ate the more mundane tasks that I ve found in working with Csound It s here to make working with Csound a more enjoyable and focused experience As the program develops over time I am finding more ways to make the user experience intuitive and the program faster to work with as well as finding interesting new things to create to further the capacity for musical expression The program s architecture is designed to be as open as possible in both things the user can do within blue itself as well as the ability to expand blue through the creation of plugins and by taking advantage of both one can find many ways to create and shape musical ideas Beyond my own ideas on where to go with blue user feedback has also greatly shaped the direction and richness of the program Please feel free to email me anytime with feedback or join the blue mailing list and discuss your ideas and thoughts there If you d like to find out more about me you can do so on my on my website http www kunstmusik com Thanks and I hope you enjoy composing with blue Steven Yi Vil Credits I would like to thank the following people following people for their contributions to blue Michael Bechard Java development Andr s Cabrera Documentation Tutorials and Ideas Dave Seidel Java development Kevin Welsh PHP work on blueShare server Java code Vili Part I User s Manual This section is for users Chapter 1 Getting Started Introduction
81. blue a music composition environment for csound Steven Yi blue a music composition environment for csound by Steven Yi 2 5 0 Published 2013 08 12 Copyright 2000 2012 Steven Yi Abstract blue is a music composition environment for use with Csound It is written in Java The homepage for blue is available at http blue kunstmusik com Table of Contents Preface hatin be T RR PORE ER pda v ve iS A ea pe RIVER ei Moora Ate ate vii Credits RE viii Users siti sire eG er SEE EXEC isis CER REEEC REED ERE EEX RERO x HE PER rU eee 1 ME DPI RE I Deer lens 2 InttoductiOn 2 Installation EET 2 Requirements i ere errem xr e Prax TR ERR EVER ETFI eee TEES 2 Installing blue tute tt t ee Peedi Eier emere et 3 Installing Csound rtt re Pte t Rr aa DS E TREE ESS 3 Setting Up Program Options ssssssssss III eem hem mhee hen rentrer 5 Primary Bditots WR ER EFE SEEN ERR ERES ER ERE FR 17 Score Timelimne eI EIER IS aei e 17 Orchestra Manager e rt re er Ee e e Etre este aden fete 24 User Defined Opcodes Manager 25 Project Properties represi msiyo etie RE e ine nri dbs T e EE ITRS 28 MIR GP ED 31 Blue Liye 38 Tables Manager A eee PA UPPER ERAN 41 Globals
82. blue will check for devices against the default driver and not necessarily what is in the dropdown Please be sure that if you are planning to use the auto detect feature with a particular driver that you also select the driver and enable it with the checkbox Enabling the checkbox determines if this device will be enabled by default for new projects Audio input device to use Equivalent to using i flag setting on the commandline This setting is dependent on the setting used on the audio driver setting Using a value of adc will use the default device for the driver The value of this setting will be used for all projects that set Audio In enabled in the project level realtime render settings By selecting the button to the right of this field blue will try to detect what devices are available for the chosen Audio Driver If blue is able to find the devices a popup dialog will appear with a list of available devices Selecting from the popup will then populate the textfield with the correct device string that Csound will use to choose the device requested Note If the driver is chosen but not enabled for use via its checkbox when auto detecting blue will check for devices against the default driver and not necessarily what is in the dropdown Please be sure that if you are planning to use the auto detect feature with a particular driver that you also select the driver and enable it with the checkbox Enabling the checkbox
83. buffer insert insert blank note into currently selected row notes in current row and after are shifted down if notes are at end are shifted off they are lost del delete selected note s move selection to next row after current selection shift backspace delete selected notes notes after selected notes are shifted up to fill in place where deleted notes were empty notes appended to end ctrl k toggle keyboard notes mode ctrl shift up raise keyboard octave by one ctrl shift down lower keyboard octave by one 96 Reference Table 3 4 Keyboard Note Mode For More Information Shortcut PCh Value blue PCH Value MIDI Value 7 8 00 8 0 60 5 8 01 8 1 61 8 02 8 2 62 8 03 8 3 63 8 04 8 4 64 8 05 8 5 65 g 8 06 8 6 66 b 8 07 8 7 67 h 8 08 8 8 68 n 8 09 8 9 69 j 8 10 8 10 70 m 8 11 8 11 71 q 9 00 9 0 T2 2 9 01 9 1 73 w 9 02 9 2 74 3 9 03 9 3 75 9 04 9 4 76 r 9 05 9 5 TI 5 9 06 9 6 78 t 9 07 9 7 79 6 9 08 9 8 80 y 9 09 9 9 81 7 9 10 9 10 82 9 11 9 11 83 1 10 00 10 0 84 9 10 01 10 1 85 o 10 02 10 2 86 0 10 03 10 3 87 p 10 04 10 4 88 See the tracker blue example file in the blue examples soundObjects folder ZakLineObject Accepts NoteProcessors no 97 Reference Zak Line Object Add and graphically edit zak k rate signals Use the bottom and buttons to add remove lines
84. bug problems You can isolate PolyObjects in the main score easily by soloing that SoundLayer etc since they won t rely on other SoundObjects for their sound and investigate the problem that way many times you ll find that the problem stems from the PolyObject not being as independent as you d thought NoteProcessors Introduction NoteProcessors are a powerful tool for manipulating notes Each type of NoteProcessor serves a different purpose to adjust values for pfields They can be used to apply musical effects to a group of notes some possible uses include humanizing rhythm added crescendo decrescendo reassigning notes to different instruments applying time curves and transposition of material 63 Concepts NoteProcessors can be applied on a per SoundObject basis They can also be applied to an entire Layer to affect all SoundObjects in that layer as well as applied to a LayerGroup or to the entire Score Usage You can add NoteProcessors to SoundObjects by using the SoundObject Properties window You can add them to Layers the support them by using the button the layer s header panel To apply them to a LayerGroup or Score right click the Root Score in the Score Bar and use the popup menus to choose which item you d like to apply NoteProcessors to Role in Score Generation NoteProcessors are applied after the notes of a SoundObject Layer LayerGroup or Score are generated and before time behavior is applied Pr
85. ct Accepts NoteProcessors yes A timeline object that acts as a container for other SoundObjects PolyObjects can also be embedded within each other Try This On the root timeline rt click on a soundLayer and select Add new PolyObject You should have added a new PolyObject to the timeline Now either double click or rt click on the PolyObject and select Edit SoundObject You should now be within the PolyObjects timeline and the button which says root should now have another button next to it that says PolyObject Now try adding a few soundLayers and a few GenericScore Objects Now click on root You have now returned to the root timeline Here you should see the PolyObject you ve edited Now you can scale the object you ve created and all of the objects held within will scale together as a group PythonObject Accepts NoteProcessors yes Allows for using of the Python programming language to generate score data using the Jython interpreter to interpret Python scripts You may add your own python classes to the library for use with import statements by adding them to your BLUE HOME pythonLib folder Included with blue is Maurizio Umberto Puxeddu s pmask as well as Steven Yi s Orchestral Composition library found in Blue s application directory under blue pythonLib 90 Reference After writing your script to generate notes assign the string value of the notes to the variable score Blue will then read in the
86. ct s contents actually start looping in relationship to each other is determined by the Repeat Point one can edit the Repeat settings in the property box of any SoundObject The Repeat Point specifies the beat at which the group of notes will begin after the previous note group begins If the Use Repeat Point is not checked the next note group will begin immediately after the previous note group s last note ends An example would be a PolyObject whose contents are three one beat notes played back to back il 0 0 1 0 34 5 12 1 01 0345 i3 2 0 1 0 3 4 5 If one set the Time Behavior to Repeat without using a Repeat Point and stretched the length of the actual PolyObject to six beats six one beat notes would play back to back like this il 0 0 1 0 34 5 12 1 01 0345 i3 2 01 0345 id 003 4 5 i2 4 0 1 0 3 4 5 LG 0530 04 09 34 5 60 Concepts However if one were to change the PolyObject to use Repeat Points and set the repeat point to 2 5 this would be the result il 0 01 0345 r2 4 0 10 3 4 5 rs 2 0 1 0 3 4 5 LL 25 14095345 I2 3339 r3 Po n e OORS E ES EL 5 0 4 5 Note that there are more notes being played this time Why Because with a Time Behavior of Repeat blue will try to fit as many notes that it can into the PolyObject using the repeat settings given without violating the order and length of the PolyObject s note arrangement With the previous example blue played the second group of t
87. d 12 scale degrees the 8 22 would be interpreted as 9 10 blue PCH is allowed as an option to be used with blue PCH note processors and then to be used with the Tuning NoteProcessor MIDI When this Pch Generation method is chosen a MIDI note value 0 127 60 Middle C is used for FREQ and the chosen Scale will not be used The display for the editor will automatically switch to show octaves and notes for standard MIDI scale values Using MIDI note values is useful for instruments that exepct MIDI note values such as the fluidsynth opcodes as well as midiout Time Options Notes Properties Note Template i INSTR ID START DUR FREQ FREQ 800 1 Snap v Snap Enabled Time Display Time Number The Time Options in the PianoRoll are accessed and behave very much in the same manner as those that are in the main timeline The button labelled in the upper right corner of the PianoRoll canvas will open and close the panel on the right that contains the properties Time Options Snap Enabled Enables snapping behavior on the timeline If enabled vertical lines will be drawn at snap points set by the value below it In the screenshot above the snap is enabled and set to every 1 0 beats Time Display Controls how the time in the time bar above the PianoRoll canvas will display The time value will show as time while Number display will display as integers The number below show how often to
88. dObject can be modified from the SoundObject Editor Window Besides the selected and unselected states you can double click a soundObject to put it into an enabled state Enabled objects are highlighted in orange and are the SoundObjects that are triggered when multi trigger or repeat is used Once a SoundObject is added to the Live Space it can be triggered in one of two ways Single Trigger Trigger the contents of the currently selected SoundObject This is done by using the keyboard shortcut ctrl T cmd T on OSX Multi Trigger Triggers the contents of the currently enabled SoundObjects This is done either by using the Trigger button or using the keyboard shortcut ctrl shift T cmd shift T on OSX Triggering a soundObject will take the score generated from it and pass it immediately to the active Csound instance for blueLive blueLive must be running for this to work Scores are always generated with Time Behavior of None processed through their NoteProcessors then scaled according to the given tempo One can turn on Repeat to cause repeated trigger of enabled SoundObjects according to the tempo given and the number of beats in which to retrigger For example using a repeat of 4 means it will re trigger every four beats The score is processed as mentioned above but there is no truncation done Therefore if a SoundObject generates a score of 8 beats and there is a repeat of 4 beats when the repeat occurs there will be 4 beats of
89. dObjects in blue represent a perceived sound idea whether it be a single atomic sound event or aggregate of other sound objects A SoundObject on the timeline can represent many things whether it is a single sound a melody a rhythm a phrase a section involving phrases and multiple lines a gesture or anything else that is a perceived sound idea Just as there are many ways to think about music each with their own model for describing sound and vocabulary for explaining music there are a number of different SoundObjects in blue Each SoundObject in blue is useful for different purposes with some being more appropriate for expressing certain musical ideas than others For example using a scripting object like the PythonObject or RhinoObject would service a user who is trying to express a musical idea that may require an algorithmic basis while the PianoRoll would be useful for those interested in notating melodic and harmonic ideas The variety of different SoundObjects allows for users to choose what tool will be the most appropriate to express their musical ideas Since there are many ways to express musical ideas to fully allow the range of expression that Csound offers blue s SoundObjects are capable of generating different things that Csound will use Although most often they are used mostly for generating Csound SCO text SoundObjects may also generate ftables instruments user defined opcodes and everything else that would be needed to
90. dbfs aout 2 iamp 440 outs aout aout For convenience the standard code completion popup will auto complete text for replacement keys When editing code type lt then press ctrl space The standard code completion popup will show a list of all of the replacement keys that have been assigned to interface objects Selecting a replacement key will insert that key into the code text area already formatted within lt and gt Widget Values The following lists what values the widgets will emit when generating instruments Table 3 5 Widget Values Widget Replacement Key Value Knob objectName float value from knob Horizontal Slider objectName float value from slider Horizontal Slider Bank objectName_sliderNum for each float value from slider slider Vertical Slider objectName float value from slider Vertical Slider Bank objectName_sliderNum for each float value from slider slider Label none none Checkbox objectName 1 or 0 depending on if checked or not Dropdown List objectName Generates index of selected item when item is made automatable or uses value from user assigned Dropdown List SubChannel Dropdown List objectName Value from Dropdown List that is a named subchannel from the blue Mixer XY Controller objectNameX objectName Y X and Y value LineObject objectName lineName for each list of values from line can be line comma separated with or without leading 0 0
91. determines if this device will be enabled by default for new projects Driver to use for MIDI input and output This is equivalent to using the rtmidi flag setting on the commandline Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering and if so will use the value from the dropdown as the driver setting MIDI output device to use Equivalent to using Q flag setting on the commandline This setting is dependent on the setting used on the MIDI driver setting The value of this setting will be used for all projects that set MIDI Out enabled in the project level realtime render settings By selecting the button to the right of this field blue will try to detect what devices are available for the chosen MIDI Driver If blue is able to find the devices a popup dialog will appear with a list of available devices Selecting from the popup will then populate the textfield with the correct device string that Csound will use to choose the device requested 12 Getting Started Note If the driver is chosen but not enabled for use via its checkbox when auto detecting blue will check for devices against the default driver and not necessarily what is in the dropdown Please be sure that if you are planning to use the auto detect feature with a particular driver that you also select the driver and enable it with the checkbox Enabling the checkbox determines if this device will be enabled by defau
92. different How the duration relates to the generated score contents is controlled by the Time Behavior property End Time Read Only property that shows the end time of the soundObject Time Behavior Selects how subjective time should be used on a soundObject Options are 1 Scale The default option stretches generated score to last the duration of the soundObject 2 Repeat repeats generated score up to the duration of the soundObject 3 None Passes the score data as is When using Time Behavior of None width of soundObject no longer visually corresponds to duration of the soundObject s score About Note Generation Sound Objects generate notes in the following manner SoundObject generates initial notes NoteProcessors are applied to the generated notes Time Behavior is applied to the notes Partial Object Rendering When using a render start time other than 0 0 how soundObjects contribute notes depends on if they support partial object rendering Normally notes from all soundObjects which can possibly contribute notes to the render taking into account render start and render end are gathered and then if any notes start before the render start time they are discarded as there is no way to start in the middle of a note and to know exactly that it sounds as it should as blue s timeline only knows about notes and not how those instruments render 69 Reference However there are certain cases where blue sou
93. down overall render time Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering Message Level Note Amplitudes Enables note amplitude messages from Csound m1 Out of Range Messages Enables samples out of range messages from Csound m2 Warnings Enables warning messages from Csound m4 Benchmark Information Enables benchmark information from Csound m128 Advanced Settings Advanced Settings Extra flags to append to the commandline that might not be covered by options in the UI Pressing the button will open the documentation for the Csound command flags Csound Documentation Root but be set for this to work MIDI These settings are for blue s MIDI input used with blueLive The table shows what devices are currently available and whether they are enabled for use with blueLive or not You can use the rescan button to search for devices if you have just plugged in a device OSC This allows you to set what port blue will listen to for incoming OSC messages Defaults to 8000 The following messages are understood by blue score play score stop score rewind e score markerNext e score markerPrevious e blueLive onOff blueLive recompile 16 Getting Started blueLive allNotesOff e blueLive toggleMidiInput Primary Editors Score Timeline Start Render From 0 0 To 16 0 Play Time 00 00 04 14 Loop 41 1 41 b Bl blueLive Recompile All Not
94. e a minimal amount of script something like generatorl generateNotes inputl input2 input3 I find that it s a nice way to separate the concerns of each object as I m currently in the middle of working on the piece I m finding that first PythonObject getting a bit big so I m thinking i ll split that into different PythonObjects which I can visually see labeled on the timeline by changing their names to something like generator classes generator utility functions constants etc and probably in the future as I get to finishing this piece I ll probably take all of these class definitions and make a library of Python code out of it and just have it installed into my PythonLib directory But having the way it is now I ve found to be very convenient in development as it s easy to find all of my code Note the execution order of blue is top down per soundLayer meaning it will process all SoundObjects in the first soundLayer and if it finds a polyObject it will go down into that and process the first soundLayer etc before going on to the next SoundObject because of the execution order I can put all of my PythonObjects that have nothing to do with note generation my class definitions utility functions and intitialization scripts in the first few soundLayers of my piece and know that they ll always get interpreted by the jython interpreter and left in the memory space first before trying to process the other SoundObjects 139
95. e scenarios and patterns that have arose while using it in my own work How to Use the Sound SoundObject First insert the Sound SoundObject as you would any soundObject by rt clicking for Mac users hold down the apple key and click on the main timeline of the score area and chose Add New Sound from the popup menu 144 Tutorial 2 A Sound SoundObject will be inserted wherever you clicked on the timeline You ll notice that this soundObject acts and behaves like any other soundObject you can move it around in time drag to change the duration change it s name in the soundObject property dialog and click on it to edit it You won t be able to add any noteProcessors to it however but that will be explained more in detail in the What happens when it gets processed section If you click on the soundObject to pull up its editor you ll see a text box with a default message insert instrument text here In the editor is where you write your instrument definition but without writing any instr 11 or endin the number of the instrument and the correct formatting of the instrument is handled by the soundObject For a simple example you might try aout oscili 30000 440 1 outs aout aout where the 1 at the end of the oscili line is an ftable numbered 1 defined in the tables editor under the tables tab For our example let s go ahead and definte the ftable as f1 0 65536 10 1 which is a sin wave At this point you might wa
96. e user is currently editing a library SoundObject and not an individual SoundObject The instance object is very useful if your work entails using many variations of single source of material For example you can take a SoundObject that represents a drum pattern then make many Instances of that pattern and add them to your project If you want to later change the base pattern it will update everywhere that there are Instance objects pointing to it Another example if you have a SoundObject that represents a motive or melodic fragment you can put it into the SoundObject library then make 10 instances of it adding noteProcessors to do things like transpose or get the retrograde etc Later if you decide you want to change the base material you d only have to edit it once within the library All Instance objects pointing to the changed object will be updated and will maintain all of their transformations and relationships that were added via NoteProcessors If you later decide that you want to work with the original material where you have an Instance and want to break the link replacing the instance with a copy of the original to modify you can convert the Instance object to a GenericScore To do this you can use one of two methods Right click the Instance object and choose Convert to Generic Score Go the SoundObject Library select the original and use Copy then select the Instance object and use Replace with SoundObject in Buff
97. eTemplatew li pch pc D PerformerGroup D ftgen block template Code Repository The Code Repository is where you edit the options that will come up from the code popup the popup menu that is accessible by rt clicking on most of the text areas in blue The Code Repository features a tree to organize your code Rt clicking on a folder will give you options to add a new code group remove the current group or add a code snippet to the group If you add either a code group or a code snippet it will be created with a default name To edit the name double click on the group or snippet and the area on the tree will change into a text field to edit the name To edit a snippet simply click on the snippet in the tree and on the right a text area will appear In that text area edit the text that is associated with the code snippet When you are done editing your code repository the next time you rt click on a text area the code popup will reflect the changes you have made including any new code groups and snippets you ve added 44 Getting Started Effects Library The Effects Library organizes Effects used with blue s mixer You can create and edit Effects as well as organize Effects into Groups The layout of the tree that contains the effects will be used when building the popup menu in the Mixer for selecting effects Note This information will be further expanded and moved into a new section with the manual reorganiza
98. eature of the blueX7 is that it can import DX7 banks A large collection can be found in the bigdx7 zip file within the dx72csound zip file from http www parnasse com dx72csnd shtml to steven reading this page it seems part of the model is unfinished which may answer some of my questions above On the csound tab you find by default blueMixerOut aout aout This routes the output of the instrument directly to the stereo output of csound You can include further code to process the aout signal produced by the blueX7 or to route it as needed For example if you are outputing in mono you could code such as out aout To call the blueX7 instrument in the orchestra create a GenericScore object in the timeline and call the the blueX7 instrument blueX7 requires 2 additional p fields P field 4 is the pitch class of the note in format 110 Reference octave semitone e g C4 is 4 00 C 1 is 1 01 and F6 is 6 05 P field 5 contains the midi velocity for note with values from 0 to 127 For example i101 8 00 100 il 1 8 02 100 il 1 8 04 100 iT T2809 100 il 1 8 07 100 BlueSynthBuilder BlueSynthBuilder BSB allows the user to graphically build instrument interfaces for their Csound instruments The graphical interface is designed for the use of exploring configuration of an instrument as well as adjustment to values in realtime requires enabling using the Csound API see here About BlueSynthBuilder Princ
99. ed feedback operator enable disable and LFO characteristics The transposition made by Key Transpose is handled in half tones with C3 being the normal central pitch There are 32 algorithms to choose from which represent the original DX7 possibilities You can see a visual representation of the algorithm on the left of this panel Feedback represents the amount of feedback into a modulator The position and result of this feedback depends entirely on the algorithm used The range of feedback is 0 to 7 this range is the same as on the original DX7 The operator on off checks turn on and off operators current this is here but the emulation patches do not use them The LFO panel sets the global LFO parameters The parameters are Speed Delay PMD Pitch Modulation Depth and AMD Amplitude Modulation Depth They all have ranges from 0 to 99 the range is the same as on the original DX7 Additionally you can select the shape of the LFO from triangle saw up saw down square sine and sample and hold You can also sync the operators if sync is on changing Modulation Sensitivity for pitch marked with an asterisk on any of the operators will affect the rest Finally you have the 6 operators plus an envelope generator PEG each on its own tab All six operators have the same parameters divided in the following sections Oscillator Keyboard Level Scaling Operator Modulation sensitivity Envelope Generator An important f
100. ed SoundObjects by pressing the mouse down on one of the selected SoundObjects then drag to move them in time as well as up and down layers If you press shift down when you click once you drag you will create clones of the original material and move them in time If you move the mouse to the right side of a SoundObject the cursor will change to a resize cursor and clicking and dragging will allow you to change the duration of the SoundObject Note you can only resize one SoundObject at a time If you have a single SoundObject selected you can edit the properties of the SoundObject by using the SoundObject Property Window This window can be opened from the menu Windows Sound Object Properties or by using the shortcut F3 From this window you can change the name of the SoundObject its start time and subjective duration as well as add and remove NoteProcessors if the SoundObject supports it To edit a SoundObject select a single SoundObject and open the SoundObject Editor window You can also double click a SoundObject which will set the editor for the SoundObject in the Editor window 18 Getting Started as well as focus the SoundObject Editor window If the Editor window is docked double clicking the SoundObject will cause the editor to show the docked window Patterns Patterns Layer Groups are based upon the same SoundObject system as the SoundObject Layer Groups but presents a different way to working with these
101. ed by right clicking with in the SubChannels area and choosing Add SubChannel from the popup menu To remove a subchannel right click the channel strip to be removed and select Remove from the popup menu At the bottom of every Channel and SubChannel strip is an output dropdown box to choose where to route that Chanel s audio to For SubChannels they can only route to other SubChannels which lead to the Master Channel meaning that there is no feedback allowed i e routing SubChannelA to SubChannelB and then to SubChannelC and that back to SubChannelA is not allowed as it would create a loop 32 Getting Started For the instruments in the orchestra to be able to route out to the Mixer a special pseudo opcode must be used for the output of the instrument entitled blueMixerOut You use blueMixerOut in the same way as the outc opcode If the Mixer is not enabled in the Dialog when blue goes to process the instrument blueMixerOut will be replaced with outc thus making the audio of that instrument directly route out to dac or disk depending on how Csound is set to render If the Mixer is enabled blueMixerOut is translated into global variables and the Mixer s instrument code is generated automatically without the user having to worry about the code details of setting up a Mixer system themselves in Csound code There is also a subChannel form of blueMixerOut available that is able to target a subchannel by name This form is used in
102. eed to have access to the native library to work If the API is not enabled for use out of the box the following explains how to setup the API on different platforms Windows Users using the Windows Installer for Csound should use the doubles version from SourceForge has d in the name After installing the installer should setup everything such that blue should work with the API If for some reason it is unable to do so or you have compiled Csound yourself and the location of jesound dll is different from where it is installed with the installer you can modify the blue etc blue conf file to tell blue where to find the jcsound6 dll For example if the directory where jcsound6 dll is located is in c myCsound open up blue etc blue conf and modify the default so that it contains default options branding blue J Xms256m J Xmx768m J Djava library path c my Linux Linux users should install a doubles version of Csound The version of Csound found in package repositories should be one compiled for doubles After installing Csound and the Java interface for Csound locate where lib jcsound6 so is and modify the blue bin blue file Search for the lines that contain J Djava library path usr lib jni and modify usr lib jni the default for Debian Ubuntu based systems to the directory where lib jcsound so is located Mac OSX Mac OSX users should use the installer for Csound from Sourceforge The installer should install both the float
103. eful In my latest work with blue I ve been using almost exclusively the PythonObject for all of my SoundObjects in blue I did use some sound SoundObjects initially to draft some sounds out converting them to instruments in the orchestra manager later I also used genericScore objects for writing some test notes for my instruments which I keep around also for experimenting but for the piece s final output they are not being used For setting up my piece I developed some classes to use in Python instantiated multiple instances of the classes set with different parameters and then use those instances in different PythonObjects in blue for creating the score of my piece Because the interpreter is not being reinitialized between uses by the PythonObject I m able to use one PythonObject to hold only definitions of functions and classes another PythonObject which only has my initialization scripts that makes instances of the classes defined in the first PythonObject and from all other PythonObjects I use the instances from the second PythonObject as my generators to better clarify my first PythonObject has scripts like class Yo def do self a b print doing something with str a str b def yoyo self a b print do something with a and b which are instances of Yo while my second PythonObject has script like generatorl Yo generator2 Yo generator3 Yo while all other PythonObjects in my piece hav
104. egin typing to enter in a value for that note then press enter when you are finished Depending on the type of column you have configured blue will verify that the data entered is allowable and if so it will save that data to the note If the value is not allowable the cell will become hilighted in red and will require you to either fix your input to be valid or press esc to cancel entering in data When entering in data for a new note the first time you enter in information for a column in the note s row it will not only enter in the data for the column but also copy values for all other columns from the first note that exists previous to the note being edited If there is no notes entered some default settings will be used based on the column type Like other tracker systems the duration of a note entered will last as long as until either the next entered note the end of the pattern or until an OFF note is encountered So for example if a note is entered in step 0 and step 2 the duration of the first note will last 2 steps while the second note will last until the end of the pattern 62 steps in a default 64 step track To enter an OFF statement go to the row where 95 Reference you want the note to end and press ctrl shift space This will make the row an OFF note So if a note is entered in step 0 and step 2 and an OFF is entered into step 1 and step 4 the first note will last 1 step while the second note will last 2 steps
105. emember that time behavior is applied after noteProcessors and the resulting score will be a time warped score repeated x times and NOT a score repeated x time and then timewarped Time Warping when used with a time behavior of Scale be aware that estimating the final tempo of the object may be tricky as the scaling will alter the duration of notes Tuning Processor Parameters pfield baseFrequency scalaFile 108 Reference Converts blue PCH notation to frequency according to scale values in a Scala scale file The scale will default to 12TET wheen TuningProcessor is initially created The file selector for choosing a Scala scl file will default to user s blue directory under the scl subdirectory It is advised that users download the 3000 scale archive from the Scala website at http www huygens fokker org scala and place them in the blue scl directory or whever they find convenient Base frequency determines what 8 00 should be set to defaulting to middle C below A440 same as in Scala Input for the noteProcessor should be oct scaleDegree where oct is equal to octave and scale degree equal to what degree of the scale to use The output will be frequency values so instruments should be set to accept values as frequency NOTES Fractional scaleDegree s are not supported For the scaleDegree the blue PCH does not work exactly like Csound pch notation In Csound pch 8 01 would be different than 8
106. en freeze or do whatever to the parent PolyObject in a reliable fashion Try to group logical phrases in your music into PolyObjects It s much easier on the user as a composer to arrange the notes this way This enables one to see opportunites for reuse of certain musical phrases and implement that repetition easily by adding said PolyObjects to the SoundObject Library and copying instances wherever they re needed Try to keep the length of the PolyObject representational of its actual length This only really applies if the Time Behavior being used is None otherwise a PolyObject s length is always going to represent accurately its length in the composition Remember to use Set Subjective Time to Objective Time as needed Debugging When things don t work out the way you expected them too and they won t a great tool to use to help track down the problem is the Test button This button renders the i statements that any given SoundObject will generate and it comes in very useful with PolyObjects So if you ve got a PolyObject that won t render when you Test it drill down into it and test its constituent notes Testing and drilling down into its sub PolyObjects as well You ll eventually find the cause Examine NoteProcessors and the Time Behaviors of each SoundObject these can be common culprits with sound problems too If one follows the best practice Group co reliant notes together into PolyObjects this also makes it easier to de
107. en systems without any external dependencies Users do not have to install anything further to use this object and the code will continue to function for the duration of Blue s existence When writing your script to generate notes assign the string value of the notes to the symbol score Blue will then read in the value from that variable and continue processing Example 1 def score il 0 2 3 4 5 The above example shows the simplest script and will generate a single note If the ClojureObject is set with a start time of 0 and a duration of 2 then it will generate the following score it 0 023 45 71 Reference Example 2 use defn pchadd defn arpeggiate def scor clojure string only join base interval vector base 0 quot interval 12 base 1 rem interval 12 totalDur instr dur basepch intervals amp let score template i d Ss s s s notes cycle map apply format d 02d basepch 1 join newline concat intervals subvec intervals 1 count intervals map format score template instr 1 dur 2 amp range 0 totalDur dur list that will limit the map notes blueDuration 1 0 25 8 0 0 4 7 12 arpeggiat The above example is taken from blue examples soundObjects clojureSoundObject blue This script defines an apreggiate function then calls that assigns the value to score Notice the use of blueDuration a symbol
108. eneration NoteProcessors are applied after the notes of the soundObject are generated and before time behavior is applied Processing starts with the first NoteProcessor in the chain and the results of that are passed down the chain Add Processor Parameters pfield value The AddProcessor takes two parameters one for pfield positive integer gt 0 and one for value any number When applied it will add the user defined value to the set pfield for all notes For example if you have a SoundObject with notes for an instrument that uses p4 as its amplitude If you have values for p4 within the range of 78 and 82 such as the following score il 0 2 78 if 42 80 EL 26 1 il 82 If an AddProcessor is used that was set to 4 4 for value 4 for pfield your notes afterwards would be moved to the range of 82 4 to 86 4 il ii il il 82 84 85 86 e poe sco Ot OOO ooo Pop The 2 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration SoundObject with time behavior set to scale Equals Processor Parameters pfield value Sets user given pField of all notes in soundObject to user given value i e set all p4 s to value 440 or set all p6 s to value work audio wav mySample2 wav The following score 99 Reference i102 8 00 rl 6 8 04 ilt 8 07 il 9 00 If used with an EqualsProcessor with value 7 00 and pfield 4 would result in the following score
109. ependent data will be created Score is then generated for the parameter automation data that together with the instruments generated will create the signals Care was taken to optimize the generated score and instruments Unnecessary score will not be generated if multiple points with the same value are found as well as when there is a discontinous break in the values Values from the parameter automation will also correctly be generated from render start time until render end time if used For parameters with resolution every value is a discrete jump so the instrument for resolution based parameters will on it s i time run will simply set the new value and then turn the instrument instance off to save CPU cycles Command Blocks Introduction Command Blocks are Csound ORC code with special directions to blue on how to processes them The are available to use only within the Global Orchestra areas of Instruments not to be confused with the global orchestra area in the globals manager tab and were created to help users build fully encapsulated instruments such that an instrument and all of its necessary parts could be grouped together Note This feature has largely been made unnecessary due to new Csound programming practices that have developed since this was initially introduced This feature is left in blue though to support legacy projects Basic Usage To use a command block you will need to wrap the section of orc code that you w
110. er JMask Accepts NoteProcessors yes JMask is GUI score generating soundObject based on Andre Bartetzki s CMask http www bartetzki de en software html JMask currently supports all features of CMask except field precision though support for this feature is planned Users of JMask are encouraged to read the CMask manual available at Andre Bartetzki s site to get familiar with CMask concepts as they are represented 1 1 in JMask JMask builds on top of CMask s concepts and feature set by providing the user a graphical way to edit parameter values tables masks etc Also by using JMask the user s projects are guaranteed to run on all blue installations while using CMask from blue requires anyone opening and using the project to have CMask installed on their system 75 Reference The following documentation for JMask will assume the user is familiar with CMask and that the user has read through the CMask manual available from the link above The following will discuss how to use JMask covering how the CMask features are implemented in JMask and how to work with the user interface Over time this manual entry for JMask will attempt to grow to be self sufficient and not require knowledge of CMask but for now familiarity with CMask is suggested Overview A single JMask object is equivalent to one CMask field A single JMask object holds a collection of Parameters one for each pfield to be generated in the score Each of the P
111. erate either frequencies or bluePCH format text amongst other values Instruments that are intended to be used with blue s MIDI system will have to work with a 5 p field note format This does not mean your instrument can only work with 5 p fields but rather that your instrument must support at least that An example blue project can be found in examples features blueLiveMidi blue if you are using the OSX application you may need to explore the contents of the blue app program to find the examples folder Exploring Ideas Blue Live uses a subset of the same soundObjects that are available on the score timeline within the main editing window of blue Some possible ways you could explore ideas are trying out SCO ideas with genericScore testing your python functions with the pythonObject testing your javaScript functions with the rhinoObject 40 Getting Started using Cmask nGen Common Music and other programs with the external soundObject to try out things live Tables Manager blue 0 94 0 beta 14c qdamma blue File Edit Project Tools Script Window Help Start Render From 12 071428 score i glabal uda praject properties sound file Tables Tables Manager Getting Started The tables manager contains a text area for global tables Table statements put here will be immediately inserted above i statements of the lt CsScore gt area of the generated CSD file Globals Manager Csound Orchestra and
112. ers here by right clicking and selecting the remove option Changes in the dialog are not committed until you press the save button so if you close the window or cancel you re old settings will be still in tact Automation blue supports automation of BSB Widget values for those which support automation For these widgets automation must be enabled before they allowed to be automated When making them automatable the place in Csound instrument code where the widget value will be added to the generated Csound code must be a place where a k rate signal is allowed otherwise the code will not compile and Csound will not run the project This is required because when using the Csound API the signal will need to be k rate to allow for live modification of the value when rendering More information on paramenter automation can be found here Note In 0 124 3 a change was made that breaks backwards compatibility Previously if a BSBObject was set to have Automation Allowed but was not itself automated it would compile as a constant in the generated CSD As of 0 124 3 if a widget is made to allow automation the Csound code that uses the widget value must accept a k rate signal whether the API is used or not If you have a project that rendered fine before 0 124 3 but afterwards can not render due to problems with Csound complaining that k rate signals not allowed then you will need to either 115 Reference set the widget to not
113. es Off MIDI Input Score Orchestra UDO Tables GlobalOrchestra GlobalScore ProjectProperties Bluelive Single Line Multi Line root v Use Tempo v Manage Score Manager LayerGroups Layers Properties Drum Na Add SoundObject Layer Group Drum Layer Q Add Patterns Group D 2 rum SoundObjects 2 Drum A PianoRoll PianoRoll PianoRoll Soundobject Editor 8 Output Python Console Wi Virtual Keyboard Window Rendering CSD Score Timeline Overview The Score is the tool in blue for working with musical material in time It is a canvas upon which to create and organize musical ideas The Score features a modular timeline where each Layer Group within the Score is a module These modules are a plug in point that can be extended with other plug ins Each Layer Group in turn may be broken down into layers The image above shows a Score with three Layer Groups The first two are Patterns LayerGroups while the last is a SoundObject Layer Group Also shown is the ScoreManager dialog accessible from the Manage button on the left part of the Score Layer Groups Introduction A Score is divided into Layer Groups Each Layer Group has a user interface for the main timeline area as well as a header interface that shows on the left hand side The header area usually shows meta information and controls for each of the Layer Group s layers
114. exible pattern oriented score editor useful for musical ideas which are pattern based such as drum parts or minimalist style musical ideas Usage For the general workflow of using the PatternObject users will liked likely want to 1 Setup the PatternObject Properties number of beats and subdivisions 2 Add Patterns giving each pattern a name to help identify what the pattern is for 3 Edit each Pattern s score 4 Visually edit the PatternObject score Setting PatternObject Properties The PatternObject s Time Properties can be modified by clicking on the button in the upper right corner of the editor Clicking the button will hide or show the properties panel on the right as shown below 84 Reference Pattern Mame Snare Hihat m MMNMMNM Hihatz Bass Drum ing E 4 Pattern Score 14 0 25 80 Note Editing the time values will clear out any pattern triggers that the user has entered It is recommended that one first decide the pattern time properties before working with the PatternObject Reference Adding Patterns To add Patterns to the PatternObject use the button on the bottom of the left hand section Double clicking the name of the pattern name will allow editing of the name and clicking on the x box will allow for muting the Pattern Clicking on the Pattern in the table will also bring up it s score in the area below Editing the Pattern s Score The Pattern s score
115. fined Opcode Repository Browser Using the I Button will open up the UDO Repository browser The browser shows the available UDO s in the repository on Csounds com and allows for importing from the repository straight into your project 27 Getting Started Project Properties LEUTE Tables Global Project Information v Audio Out Audio In MIDI In MIDI Out gt Benchmark Information Advanced Settings Complete Override blue 2 3 0_beta timeSphere blue Loop 41 I gt 441 b BJ bluetive pile All Notes Off MIDI Input Ic Real Time Render Settings Sr ksmps nchnls Odbfs Devices Message Level sr to use when rendering in real time Value defaults to value set in Program Options ksmps to use when rendering in real time Value defaults to value set in Program Options nchnls to use when rendering in real time Value defaults to value set in Program Options The checkbox sets whether Odbfs is used at all in the project If enabled the value will be assigned to the value in the textfield The default for the value is set ing Program Options as well as if Odbfs is enabled by default or not Devices to use when rendering in real time Audio In Out MIDI In Out The value of the device is dependent on the values set on the Program Options By delegating the value to use to what is set on the Program Options the project does not have to store settings which are
116. for all of these soundObjects you d have to manually go and change all of them while with instances you d only have to change the one soundObject all of the instances are pointing to which also means you could make a song template file all pointing to empty soundObjects build the form of the piece then change the soundObject s note material to fill in the form Other features include the orchestra manager which allows for importing of instruments from CSD files a list to manage instruments and the ability to selectively generate instruments when compiling CSD files instruments can be either a single Csound instrument or may be a GUI instrument Installation Requirements blue requires a Java 7 also known as 1 7 or greater JVM Java Virtual Machine To test to see if you have a JVM installed and what version at a command prompt type java version If you see something along the lines of command not found then you need to install a Java Virtual Machine A Java JVM for Linux Windows Mac OSX and Solaris can be found at http www java com From this page the correct download for the JRE Java Runtime Environment for your platform should be chosen automatically for you Note There are two main releases of Java the JRE and the JDK Java Development Kit You only need the JRE to run blue though if you are interested in developing in Java you need the JDK Getting Started Installing blue To install blue
117. hardware dependent so projects can be easily moved from one computer to the next For example if your project is set to use Audio Out one system may use a value of rtaudio alsa o dac hw 0 0 while another system may use a value of rtaudio winmme o dac2 The project only needs to be set to use Audio Out and when the project goes to render the settings set for that system s audio out will be used Enables what kind of messages Csound should report The values default to what is set in Program Options 28 Getting Started Advanced Settings Disk Render Settings sr ksmps nchnls Odbfs Filename Message Level Advanced Settings Extra flags to append to the commandline that might not be covered by options in the UI Pressing the button will open the documentation for the Csound command flags Csound Documentation Root but be set for this to work If Complete Override is enabled the value given in the Advanced Settings textbox will be used as given and no other values set from the UI will be used Projects prior to 0 106 0 will have their commandline settings copied to here and the Complete Override section will be enabled When this setting is enabled the commandline should set the call to the Csound executable to use and the flags to use but with the name of the CSD left out as it will automatically be appended to by blue An example of a commandline to use here with Complete Override is
118. he other By using a pre block the code enclosed will be pushed up to the top of the global orchestra of the CSD instrument 0 The scenario which required a solution such as this was when working with the fluidSynth opcodes For those set of opcodes a fluidEngine needs to be initialized before loading of soundfonts into that engine The design I had wanted was to have the instrument that did the fluidOutput also have the engine initialization This was a problem because the fluidOutput needed to be placed at an instrument number higher than the fluidNote playing instruments for the output chain to work correctly So here was a case of an instrument that needed to have its instrument generate later than the instruments that it depended on but also have its own fluidEngine initialization happen before all the other soundFonts load in in their own global orc statements The solution then was to create the once block feature and allow for targetting global orc code to be prepended to the top of the generated global orc code 68 Chapter 3 Reference Sound Objects Sound Objects are objects on the score timeline that are primarily responsible for generating score data Common Properties The following are properties that all SoundObjects share Common Properties Name Name of the Soundobject Subjective Duration The duration of the soundObject on the timeline versus the duration of the generated score within the soundObject which may be
119. highly recommend to anyone that they learn a little bit about scripting and how to use it to achieve their musical goals as I ve found the experience highly liberating and musically rewarding Why Use Scripting For some the use of scripting or programming may never be a factor in how they go about creating their music as the tools they have already are enough But for some it may be easier to go about expressing their needs musically by use of script and for others there just might not be anything available to do what one wants to do Within blue there are many ways to go about expressing and designing your musical work Included with blue are the built in SoundObjects which can take in standard csound scores Together with the use of the noteProcessors in blue already there are the tools to write standard csound scores move them in time and manipulate those scores by adding or multiplying pfields by user given values to achieve things like scaling amplitudes or transposing notes or retrograde notes However lets say you might find scripting in your prefered language to be easier to achieve your goals or you want to use a scoring language other than csound s standard score format or someone has advertised a new set of scripts or libraries to use you could do all of this within blue In my case I was recently modeling an object system that represented a musical model that hasn t been used much in current electronic music programs I
120. how user configures commandline options I ve found this useful for rendering a wav to disk and converting to MP3 to listen to on the go so I can review my current work To render to disk you can do so by using the File gt Render to Disk menu option or use the ctrl shift F9 shortcut Render to Disk and Play The Render to Disk and play option will use the project s Disk Render Options from its project properties to generate a soundfile on disk and after finishing play the generated file using blue s soundfile player located in the SoundFile manager tab This feature is useful if you re working on a piece that has processing demands beyond what your computer is capable of in realtime so you can have it render to disk first and then play which will give very smooth playback It is also useful if you render in realtime with lower quality settings but use higher quality settings for final project output as you can occasionally test what the output would be like using this feature To use this option you can use the File gt Render to Disk and Play menu option or use the ctrl F9 shortcut 57 Concepts SoundObjects Introduction What The concept of SoundObjects is the foundation of blue s design in organizing musical ideas This section will discuss what is a SoundObject how this idea is implemented in blue and strategies on how to use the concept of SoundObjects in organizing your own musical work is a SoundObject Soun
121. hree notes at beat 2 5 and realized it could squeeze in a partial third loop This third loop begins at beat five since that is equivalent to beat 2 5 in the second loop which is our Repeat Point It inserted the first note there and realized it couldn t fit any more notes since the next note would begin at beat six and play until beat seven that s longer than the length of our PolyObject which is six NoteProcessors and PolyObjects NoteProcessors are great when used in conjunction with PolyObjects They can be very powerful but you have to be careful of a few gotcha s P fields and PolyObjects One thing to be aware of with PolyObjects and NoteProcessors are p fields The user must make sure that the p field s that is being operated on by the Note Processor s is the same for all sounds within the PolyObject If one has a lot of typical notes in a PolyObject where p4 equals the pitch and one errant note where p4 equals phase for instance things could get disastrous if one tries to apply a PchAddProcessor to the whole PolyObject Please refer to the Best Practices section for more information Time Behavior and NoteProcessors Everything that is to follow in this section can be summed up in one important fact NoteProcessors get applied to SoundObjects before the Time Behavior does What this means is if you have a PolyObject with Repeat Time Behavior and set it up to loop twice and have a LineAddProcessor on that same PolyObject you w
122. iattack idecay isus irel i0 d mp iNew mp ienvType Soundobject Editor WB Output Python Cor Virtual Keyboa User Defined Opcodes Manager The User Defined Opcodes Manager contains three main parts Program wide User Defined Opcode Library 25 Getting Started UDO list for Project wide UDO s UDO Editor The program wide UDO library is where you can manage your entire library of UDO s Right clicking on the tree allows adding and removing groups as well as adding and removing UDO s You can also drag UDO s into the library from the project wide UDO list or paste them using the popup menu Clicking on a UDO in the library will populate the UDO Editor and a green border will be shown to highlight that you are editing the library copy of the UDO The project wide UDO list contains what UDO s are available for your project Since UDO s can be embedded into Blue instruments it is usually better to do so so that an instrument is encapsulated and copying the instrument will include all of its UDO s it depends on However using the project wide UDO list can be useful when creating a new project and multiple new instrument designs might be using a developing UDO UDO s can be created in the project wide list by using the button and removed by using the button to the left the table on top UDO s can also be dragged into this list from the library You can also drag in a folder of UDO s from the library into this list
123. if someone else wanted to run that file or if I was bringing that file to another computer all I d have to do is install the library in the lib directory and everything should work as opposed to having to do a find and replace on ever call to the library to change the path to where it is on the new computer Finding a text editor component thats made for programming This would be fantastic to find a Java text component that I can swap in that would handle things like syntax hilighting of different languages maybe has some kind of help system for syntax and references etc I haven t found one I could easily use or modify yet but hopefully something will come along Final Thoughts As time goes on I m sure there will be alot of additions to blue to help aid scripting and the use of other Score generating programs within blue I hope this tutorial has helped to show how to use the external SoundObject and Python SoundObject in blue as well as helped show what s very possible by using these SoundObjects If you have any comments suggestions for improving this tutorial or questions please feel free to email meat lt stevenyi gmail com gt Thanks and good luck Steven 143 Sound SoundObject Steven Yi 2002 Revision History Revision 1 1 2004 11 7 Converted to DocBook Some information revised as no longer applicable Revision 1 0 2002 11 6 First version of article Introduction One of the more curious soundObjects
124. ill have a group of notes looped twice with the LineAddProcessor behavior applied twice that is applied individually to each looped group of notes So to borrow from the example in Repeat Looping Time Behavior our group of three notes with no NoteProcessor and no Repeat Point would render like this 11 00 1 0 34 75 i2 1 0 1 0 3 4 5 i3 2 0 1 0 3 4 5 il 3 0 1 0 3 4 5 12 404 150 3 4 75 i3 5 0 1 0 3 4 5 If I add a LineAddProcessor to p field four starting from zero and going to two here s what the result would look like 61 Concepts il 0 0 1 0 3 0 4 5 i2 1 01 0 4 0 4 5 i3 2 0 1 0 5 04 5 id 50 30 45 i2 4 0 1 0 4 0 4 5 i3 5 0 1 05 0 4 5 This may be the desired effect and it may not In order to apply a NoteProcessor after the Time Behavior has been applied take the following steps 1 Apply the Time Behavior to you PolyObject with no NoteProcessor on it 2 Right click on the PolyObject and select Convert to PolyObject What this will do is embed your PolyObject in yet another PolyObject 3 Edit the Properties of the new PolyObject and apply the NoteProcessor to it If one applies the previous steps to the example cited above the rendered notes look like this i1 0 01 0 3 04 5 i2 1 0 1 0 3 4 4 5 ES 230016003485 AS 11 3 01 0 4 2 4 5 i2 4 0 1 0 4 6 4 5 r3 5202120 5 0 4 5 One thing the user will have to keep in mind though when referring to beats those beats will be applicable to the notes
125. in we eee ear aia bed Rae ety boda sve bata 131 Introd CtonD fertnr Sea 131 Why Use Sctipng te oce eite Ce eed Pete er oer e eite cene 132 seripung DUS a sss coos errem eee ette gato gore sme sk EE aee Swans sss Poe Dre 133 External SoundObyject eee e e ORC ER ERU TUI UM EE 134 Python SoundObject 5 3 oit eceot ies tes eu be ire ese eee E ee go dude YER e 137 Using Python with the External SoundObject versus the Python SoundObject 138 Ui M M 140 Usage Ideas i RD EO E oC bete esq 142 Future Enhancements eet eret bee eee e enmt tes eet souls eee e 142 Final Thougbts ior nep ri breiter tee pt eni poen 143 Tutorial 2 5 e2scse feretro oder iet eee e e mee o ee ges ees eem eese e o ree most 144 Introduction t i e eR ett D ced Eo dL eco ed ai RR o i ve dades 144 How to Use the Sound SoundObject 144 What Happens When It Gets Processed sss 145 Usage Scenarios and Patterns eisson neee o a E EEEE ESEA EEEE 146 Final BIER S 147 III Deyelopets debe gre De desse 148 EM 149 Note PLOCESSOLS o cee d te Dee eco Rees opo dese 149 Instruments St CE 149 Sound OBJECtS TEE 149 D GOIE uou UU RENDER I Iu EU DE 150 nitide 150 R
126. install in the lib PythonLib directory as part of your PythonPATH environment variable such that all of the libraries will be both accessible to your Python interpreter on your computer as well as the one in blue It is not recommended to put the entire PythonLib directory as part of your PythonPath however as the PythonLib has many of the same files 137 Tutorial 1 from the standard Python installation and may cause issues with locating standard library files However I find that just copying the library twice into both the PythonLib and my standard Python install s directory to be sufficient and easier to manage Using Python with the External SoundObject versus the Python SoundObject This has been the most often asked question since the addition of the external SoundObject blue and when I initially put in the external SoundObject I thought that the Python SoundObject would become somewhat unnecessary But a week or so after the addition the of externalObject I started using Python alot more in conjunction with blue and found that the Python SoundObject has a few key benefits which make me use it now everyday The Case for Using the External SoundObject First of all performance of the PythonObject is not as fast as using the standard Python interpreter with the external SoundObject For simple scripts the difference in speed isn t that noticeable but when using something like pmask which has alot of calculations when genera
127. instrument then write a note for it and then have to work with both of them as separate entities You could just add a Sound SoundObject block on the timeline write your sound using standard orc code and move it around in time on the timeline After having thought through that possibility to express my musical goals by using the Sound SoundObject I found that it opened up a lot of how I saw blue s timeline as well as how I thought about ways to work with blue As a Csound user or general electronic musician it might seem strange to think of directly writing instruments in a score especially in context to the existing music tools and musical models that you ve probably worked with However by having the Sound SoundObject I ve found that interesting possibilities have opened up and since it s creation and inclusion into blue it has been used and has played a part of just about every piece that I ve worked on Note It s not that it s impossible to implement this any other way Really it s just a single instrument with a single note but that s a technical issue an implementation issue The interesting thing is that when working with it it s really a different thing altogether conceptually It s the sound soundObject in the context of the timeline that makes its usage interesting and useful well for me at least The following sections will go over how to use Sound SoundObject what happens when it gets processed by blue as well as some usag
128. ion 0 Submitted By markvp BdTR with extra features Author Mark Van Peteghem Based on the instrument BdTR by Atte Andr Jensen atte dk 2007 This instrument adds extra features to the instrument BdTR It has one extra p field p4 that is the amplitude If it is 0 or less it is in decibels below Odbfs otherwise it is multiplied with Odbfs so should be 1 or less Instead of custom waveforms it lets you choose between a sine and a triangle For the sine you can choose the amplitude of the second harmonic for the triangle you can choose the pulse width Import Instr BlueShare BlueShare is an online in program way to share instruments and effects with other blue users BlueShare does not require a user account to download items but does require one for uploading If you would like to share an instrument or effect please sign up for an account at http blue kunstmusik com To use BlueShare go to the Tools menu to open it up Blue will contact the server to get a list of Instrument and Effects available From there you can browse categories then select an item in the upper right table to get more information Once you find something you are interested to try select Import Instrument or Import Effect The instrument or effect will download to your User Instrument Library or Effects Library in a folder called Imported Instruments or Imported Effects To use BlueShare go to the Tools menu to open it up Blue wil
129. iple of Design It has been my experience that most Csound instruments tend to be limited in user configurability of parameters than commercial synthesizer counterparts It is my belief that a large part of that is due to the text based nature of instruments I ve found that Modular instruments are easier to express connections of modules via text or code rather than visual paradigms patch cables line connections and thus easier to create the instrument by text Graphical elements however excel in relaying information about the configuration of the instrument to the user and also invite experimentation while text based configuration of instruments is often more difficult to quickly understand the parameters settings and limits Going completely graphical for the building of instruments in the case of systems like Max PD jMax or Reaktor I ve found that the instrument s design no longer become apparent when viewing complicated patches On the other hand using completely textual systems such as Csound or C coding the design of the instrument has a degree of transparency while the configuration of the parameters of the instrument becomes difficult to understand and invites less exploration Hybrid Design Using systems like MacCsound s widgets or blue s BlueSynthBuilder one is able to use graphical elements where they excel in showing configuration of an instrument and for manipulation of values while using textual elements where the
130. is standard Csound SCO text with the same features supported as by the GenericScore SoundObject Each score should be started from time zero The Pattern s score should be set such that its score s total duration fits within the time of the subDivision For example if the properties set for the PatternObject s time values are 4 beats and 4 subdivisions each beat is 1 0 in duration corresponds to p3 value of a note and thus a single subdivision in this case would be equivalent to 25 Scores shorter or longer than the subdivision length are allowed but one should be aware that the resultant score may or may not longer than what is visually represented on the PatternObject score Editing the PatternObject Score The PatternObject score is visually edited by click on squares which correspond to subdivisions of the beat For example if a Pattern s score is 25 in total duration and the time value of the PatternObject is set to 4 and 4 then clicking a square would be to insert a 16th note in a score To add to the PatternObject score simply click on the square where one wishes to have a Pattern triggered To remove simply click on a selected square The user can also click and drag to add or remove mutliple triggers Other Notes Users may be surprised at the generated score if time behavior is not set to None while others may prefer to use Scale which is the default Please be mindful of this especially when using PatternObjects and the So
131. it very simple to share instruments between projects because the required initialization and tables travel with the instrument You can preview the csd file to be generated by using Ctrl Shift G or Project gt Generate CSD to screen See how the ftgen opcode that was placed in the Global Orc tab is placed above the instrument definition Now that our instrument is ready we will create notes for it This is done by going the Score tab You can use ctrl 1 The score tab contains horizontal tracks called Sound Layers On sound layers you place objects which generate notes that instance the instruments First we will give a name to our sound layer Simply click on the black area below Name and type the name e g Notes To create a note go to the timeline on the right and in line with the sound layer right click and select Add New GenericScore 126 Your First Project File Edit Project Tools Script Window Help Start Render From 0 0 score orchestra tahles global uda project properties sound file root Mute Sola 0 00 Add New Pythonobjert Add New RAinoObject Add Mew Sound Add Mew Comment Add Mew External Add fs AudioFile Add New Line Object Add New PianaFnll Adding a Generic Score GenericScore allows ordinary csound code to be used in this case things like i statements When you click on the genericScore that has been created the bottom panel will show the contents
132. ith time behavior set to scale The LineAddString can be interpreted to mean start at beat 0 with value 0 and by beat 6 arrive at value 3 For each note the LineAddString will find the note s beat and compare against the LineAddString to see how much should be added The user should be careful to remember that SoundObjects do not apply scaling of score until after processing with noteProcessors Therefore the beat values given in the LineAddString were to be applied against the beat values of the original score LineMultiply Processor Parameters pfield LineMultiply String The LineMultiply Processor multiplies values in a user defined pfield This noteProcessor differs from the Multiply Processor in that the value muliplied by is variable over time The LineMultiply String is a set of beat value pairs that are like the breakpoints on curve The following score il 0 2 80 il 80 il 80 LL 12 80 If processed with a LineMultiple Processor with LineMultiplyString set to 0 0 6 2 and pfield set to 4 would result in il 0 0 0 5 0 0 Lil 0 69 0595 93 833336 i1 1 0 0 5 106 66667 iT 43 5 04 5 721060550 The p2 and p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject with time behavior set to scale The LineMultiplyString can be interpreted to mean start at beat 0 with value 0 and by beat 6 arrive at value 2 For each note the LineMultiplyString will find the note s beat and compare against the LineMul
133. ity Realtime Render Disk Render Csound Documentation Directory manual html Work Directory fwork blue Maintain Last Window State New User Defaults Enabled Draw Flat SoundObject Borders Draw Alpha Background on Marquees Show Csound Output Message Colors Enabled Language English en Getting Started General Options Csound Documentation Root Work Directory Maintain Last Window State New User Defaults Enabled Draw Flat SoundObject Borders Draw Alpha Background on Marquee Show Csound Output Message Colors Enabled Language This is the url of the root of your Csound Documentation blue uses this for opening up Csound Documentation as well as when opening up help for an opcode The Csound Documentation Root can be local i e file home user blue manual or file c Programs and Files blue manual or online i e http www csounds com manual html You can get the Csound html documentation from www csounds com manual The default directory that blue should open when loading saving blue project files Enables saving of window location and size If enabled upon starting of program window states will be restored Enables default text for different objects in blue Curently this affects e CodeRepository when adding new Code Snippet Enables older flat drawing style of SoundObject borders on the score timeline If this is enabled when selecting a group of So
134. l contact the server to get a list of Instrument and Effects available From there you can browse categories then select an item in the upper right table to get more information Once you find something you are interested to try select Import Instrument or Import Effect The instrument or effect will download to your User Instrument Library or Effects Library in a folder called Imported Instruments or Imported Effects To upload and instrument or effect switch to the Export tab From there you will see a place to enter your username and password a listing of instruments or effects from your libraries a tree of categories to use for uploading and a description box pre populated with the Comments field of your Instrument or Effect You can then press the Submit button to send it to the server 43 Getting Started The manage tab allows you to pull down a list of your contributed instruments and effects You can then remove the item from blueShare using Remove button Code Repository eoo Code Repository Bil Code Repository 0rch Instrument Test Script envelopes Instrument Templates L Dj orchestra nateTemnla WS ed cd mum dui Ed Bp Eo A s eTemplate il si 1 5 5 i 8 iMn Bi Notes Always On far rangel 12 peh 8 amp 8H score Always On processing D Orchestra Mate m 18 ch B stri C PyOrch NoteList 5c P BEL peh str il BEC Orchestra score not
135. le Line mode alt 3 switch to Mult Line mode left nudge selected soundObjects one pixel to the left right nudge selected soundObject one pixel to the right shift left nudge selected soundObjects ten pixels to the left shift right nudge selected soundObjects ten pixels to the right up move selected soundObjects up one layer down move selected soundObjects down one layer 117 Reference Shortcuts Description ctrl left decrease horizontal zoom ctrl right incrase horizontal zoom Table 3 9 Orchestra Manager Shortcuts Description ctrl left click if on the column header of the instruments table will enable disable all instruments Table 3 10 In a text box Shortcuts Description right click pops up a popup menu that contains entries for opcodes as well as user defined entries from the code repository ctrl space brings up a dialog that shows all possible opcode matches for the current word being typed in code completion shift F1 if cursor is within a word that is an opcode attempts to look up manual entry for that opcode shift F2 if cursor is within a word that is an opcode attempts to find a manual example CSD for that opcode and if found opens a dialog showing the example ctrl comment out line or selected lines prepends to every line ctrl shift uncomment out line or selected lines removes at beginning of every line if fo
136. le using custom play command when using Render and Play If not enabled blue s built in audio player will be used once the project is finished rendering to disk Command Command to call after finished rendering a project The command line given should use the outfile property where the name of the generated audio file should be passed to the program For example to open the rendered audio with VLC on Mac OSX you can use this command line open a VLC Soutfile File Output Settings File Format Sample Format File format to use 1 e WAV AIFF AU etc Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering Sample format to use The default of SHORT is the same as 16 bit integer audio the same as used for CD s Other formats are available in the dropdown to use Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering Save Peak Information in Header Save the peak information in the file header 15 Getting Started Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering Dither Output Use dither on output Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering Rewrite Header while Rendering Rewrite the file header while rendering This makes it possible to play the audio file in the middle of a render and is useful when the rendering of the project will take a very long time However it does slow
137. ll have their commandline settings copied to here and the Complete Override section will be enabled When this setting is enabled the commandline should set the call to the Csound executable to use and the flags to use but with the name of the CSD left out as it will automatically be appended to by blue An example of a commandline to use here with Complete Override is 29 Getting Started csound Wdo mySoundFile wav Project Information Title Title for this project For general information purposes is also used when generating header comments in CSD Author Author for this project Defaults to value set in Program Options For general information purposes is also used when generating header comments in CSD Notes Notes for this project For general information purposes is also used when generating header comments in CSD 30 Getting Started Mixer vj Enabled Mixer Subha Pr ReverbSC Feedback Cut Off Post cU Post The Mixer system in blue allows for graphically editing levels for instruments applying pre and post fader effects and routing and mixing of signals through subchannels Architecture The Mixer system has three panel sections 31 Getting Started Mixer Sections Channels Channels are auto created and bound to Instrument ID s in the Orchestra for a Project In the Mixer Dialog they are located in the fi
138. lt for new projects MIDI In MIDI input device to use Equivalent to using M flag setting on the commandline This setting is dependent on the setting used on the audio driver setting The value of this setting will be used for all projects that set MIDI In enabled in the project level realtime render settings By selecting the button to the right of this field blue will try to detect what devices are available for the chosen MIDI Driver If blue is able to find the devices a popup dialog will appear with a list of available devices Selecting from the popup will then populate the textfield with the correct device string that Csound will use to choose the device requested Note If the driver is chosen but not enabled for use via its checkbox when auto detecting blue will check for devices against the default driver and not necessarily what is in the dropdown Please be sure that if you are planning to use the auto detect feature with a particular driver that you also select the driver and enable it with the checkbox Enabling the checkbox determines if this device will be enabled by default for new projects Buffer Settings Software Buffer Size of software sample buffer to use b For more information see CommandFlags section of Csound manual for settings Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering Hardware Buffer Size of hardware sample buffer to use B For more information see
139. may use any command here that would call csound that would work as if you were running csound from a terminal 14 Getting Started Render Method sr ksmps nchnls Odbfs Using the button marked on the right will open up a file dialog so that you can find and select the csound executable to use to run Csound Note The value defined for Csound Executable should only be the command to call Csound and no other flags should be added here Choose which render service to use for rendering the project When the program loads Blue will first try to see if the Csound 6 API is available and if so show that option here If it can not find the Csound 6 API it will search for the Csound 5 API and show that option here instead if it is found If neither is found the Commandline Runner option will always be available to use Note If you have both Csound 5 and Csound 6 installed you can force Blue to ignore Csound 6 on load by adding J DDISABLE_CSOUNDs true to the blue etc blue conf file in the default options section On OSX this will be in blue app Contents Resources blue etc blue conf Default sr to use for disk render settings in new projects Default ksmps to use for disk render settings in new projects Default nchnls to use for disk render settings in new projects Default value to use for Odbfs Also the checkbox denotes whether projects should use Odbfs by default or not Render and Play Command Enabled Enab
140. melines on which SoundObjects are placed these SoundObjects are basically lists of notes grouped as a single perceived object These can be as simple as a single note or a group of notes one might handle as a motive the bassline for the A phrase the results of an predetermined matrix of sounds and silences through 28 flippings of coins or the stochastic group motion of migrating birds mapped to 17 instruments that produce variable timbres etc but underneath it all regardless of what SoundObject you use ultimately the SoundObject will produce notes in which blue will add to the running score and output to a CSD file Seen this way blue represents a sort of visual note generator scheduling system when blue was earlier on in it s development I realized that in creating blue I created a simple generic temporal framwork which would allow people to create score generators and only worry about generating those scores while easily adding them to the framework of blue which would allow the manipulation and scheduling of those score generators without the original authors having to worry about developing that aspect of it as my imagination began to wander I saw that things like cmask mother cybil and other scoring languages that have been built over time for csound could be used in the way they ve always been used but that they could easily be integrated into blue for myself the SoundObjects I ve built have offered me the ability to se
141. ment with those scripts to hear the sounds they could produce 132 Tutorial 1 Finally it lead to strong candidates for objects which I could go on to build in a more generic fashion for everyone to else to use in blue adding to the compositional possibilities In the past I ve also built simple functions to do a very specific task like add a value to all p4 s of all notes Something like this could be the case where you have a simple task that might be monotonous and you could probably achieve your goal much more quickly by a little script For example I want to generate a test file for my orchestra and all it has are notes lasting two seconds duration whose start times are every three seconds something like this could be done in maybe 6 10 lines of script regardless of the size of the orchestra Those are some of my reasons for the use of script for musical work and I m sure others have their own reasons In the end it s up to you to evaluate your situation and see if it will aid in your work or not Scripting and blue Every once in a while someone releases a new program for score generation a utility they ve decided to make for their own benefit that they ve graciously shared with the community Often these musical tools are exclusive in their use meaning they re good for their use but are difficult to integrate with other work For example say you re working on a piece and want to use an external score generator to
142. menu will appear b root Wi Use Tempa Ld Edit Paints Edit MiniMax Sound L 0 00 21 Getting Started The first option will allow editing of the values of the points entered into the line editor by use of a table with two columns the first column being the beat on which the tempo change occurs and the right column being the tempo value that it should have One may find using the table editor easier to use to fine tune values The second option will allow changing the boundary min and max tempo values for the line editor as well as the option for what to do for points that fall outside of the new range The options here are Truncate which will set any points values that lie outside the new range to the closest boundary value or Scale which will take all point values from the old range and scale them to the new range Use of the tempo editor is completely optional and users familiar with Csound s t statement for controlling global tempo may opt to disable using blue s tempo editor and to use a t statement in the global orc section of the globals tab Also older blue projects that existed from before blue s tempo editor was developed can count on their projects loading and running correctly even if opened with versions of blue that do have a tempo editor due to blue s default to disable the blue tempo editor Regardless of which tempo system is chosen by the user one should be careful not to use both at the same time
143. n define variables functions and objects in one block while using those variables in another block As an example in my recent work with the Python SoundObject I ve set up the first PythonObject in my blue work file to have nothing but class definitions as well as function definitions The second PythonObject block only has script that sets up instances of those classes written in the first PythonObject and in this second block I did all of my initialization work for these classes Finally throughout the rest of the blue work file I had PythonObjects that used the class objects I set up in the second PythonObject This would not be possible using the external SoundObject as once a script is run all existing information in memory for that script is lost unless you decided to make some kind of serialization scheme to write data to a file to be accessed by other scripts or perhaps were using a web server to maintain state data The next two sections below will explain how to use the two different SoundObjects and for the Python programmer help you determine when you might want to use one object verse the other External SoundObject The external SoundObject is a generic object that allows you to write script within blue to be executed outside of blue and have the generated score be brought back in The way this is implemented blue will read in anything that the external program writes to stdout for most scripting languages this equates to
144. n then enter in values by text entry Technical Details blue s parameter automation system is implemented in Csound code in a few different areas For instruments and effects when an Automatable Parameter is not set for automation it will replace its replacement key in its ORC code with a constant value from the UI item If the parameter is set to allow automation then the replacement key is replaced with a blue generated global k rate signal name 66 Concepts Therefore when coding instruments and effects the user should be careful to make sure that if they want the parameter to be automatable that the replacement key is placed in the code where a k rate signal is legal to use If the user is not expecting to automate that value then it would be safe to place that replacement key wherever a constant is allowed This is also useful to know when migrating older BSB Instruments and Effects to be used with the purpose of Automation After setting up the Instrument and Effects blue will then handle compiling the automations into a way that works with Csound Currently blue will first calculate init statements from where the render start time is and add that to the CSD to make sure that the global krate signals will be initiated by the time any instrument could use them Then blue creates instruments for each parameter that will be automated The instruments are driven by score and either an instrument for continuous data or resolution d
145. nce PianoRoll Accepts NoteProcessors yes Notes Properties Note Template i INSTR ID START lt DUR gt FREQ FREQ 80 0 About the PianoRoll The PianoRoll SoundObject is a graphical tool to enter in notes commonly available in many MIDI sequencer environments This PianoRoll is unique in that it is Microtonal it supports loading any Scala http www huygens fokker org scala scale file and editing of notes adapts to that scale For example in the picture above the scale loaded is a Bohlen Pierce scale with 13 tones to the tritave The PianoRoll above has adapted to that scale to show 13 scale degrees per octave of its editor The generated notes can output values as either frequency or PCH notation octave scaleDegree But don t worry if you re not interested in alternate tunings the PianoRoll is set by default to use 12 TET tuning the standard tuning system in use today About Note Template Strings The PianoRoll uses Note Template strings as a way to maintain flexibility and be able to handle the open ended nature of Csound s instruments Since the user who builds the instrument designs what each pfield will mean besides p1 p2 and p3 the Note Template string should be made to match the instrument the user wants to use the PianoRoll with When the note is generated certain special text values those enclosed in and gt will be replaced by values unique to the note For example the following No
146. nced Settings Project Settings Csound Executable This is a command for what version of Csound to execute when blue renders the project in realtime The default value of csound works if you have a 10 Getting Started Render Method ST ksmps Odbfs Devices Audio Driver Audio Out version of Csound in your path named csound You may use any command here that would call csound that would work as if you were running csound from a terminal Using the button marked on the right will open up a file dialog so that you can find and select the Csound executable to use to run Csound If you are using the API you still need to have something set here You can set it to csound in that case Note The value defined for Csound Executable should only be the command to call Csound and no other flags should be added here Choose which render service to use for rendering the project When the program loads Blue will first try to see if the Csound 6 API is available and if so show that option here If it can not find the Csound 6 API it will search for the Csound 5 API and show that option here instead if it is found If neither is found the Commandline Runner option will always be available to use Note If you have both Csound 5 and Csound 6 installed you can force Blue to ignore Csound 6 on load by adding J DDISABLE CSOUND eotrue to the blue etc blue conf file in the default options section On OSX this
147. ncept somtimes really don t play a part of the musical model for a piece It s not that you have all these instruments being played everywhere but 146 Tutorial 2 rather you have sounds going on here and there It might seem like I m being a little to theoretical here but I really think it does play a part in the work process In the situations I ve been in when I ve been asked to make a sound for a friend s website or game I ve found it nice to fire up blue set the timeline to a really close up zoom on time and just work from there to craft a sound I would add a Sound SoundObject here and there maybe use some global variables so I can make Sound SoundObjects that might just function as an Ifo or other control instrument moving things around just slightly around in time to sculpt the sound An oscillator here maybe blending it into an fm sound throw in a noise generator with some formants and a notch filter sweep Learning and Practice Sometimes I find myself just making sounds with blue and Csound It might be because I m just curious to try something out I might be working on really getting to know a synthesis technique trying to learn how to express a sound in my mind or maybe to better train my imagination to know what a sound will really sound like when I write it down etc Sometimes its just that I want to try out some new opcodes I haven t really ever used It s times like this when I find myself just using the Sound
148. nd SoundObject would generate an instrument from your text input The generated instruments from Sound SoundObjects at this point are assigned an instrument number After all instruments are generated from soundObjects all score text is then generated At this point the instrument number assigned in the earlier pass is now used by the Sound SoundObject to generate a note for your instrument The note generated by the Sound SoundObject consists of only three p fields the instrument number the start of the soundObject and the duration No other p fields are generated so your instrument should not use any other p fields For example let s say you have a Sound SoundObject with a start time at 0 5 seconds and a duration of 2 seconds When blue goes to get it s instrument let s say it is assigned instrument number 2 The generated note will be 1221059 2 Perhaps best way to see it is to do the simple example from the How to use Sound SoundObject section generate a CSD file from the Project menu select Generate CSD to file and inspect what got generated Comparing the soundObject s representation on the timeline as a sound and seeing how it got generated out might explain things better 145 Tutorial 2 NOTE because the Sound SoundObject only write out the three p fields using a noteProcessor really doesn t have any purpose which is why the sound soundObject does not support noteProcessors Ultimately in the lowes
149. nd executable option for Realtime and Disk Render settings in Program Options Getting Started Using blue with the Csound API Enabling blue to use the Csound API when rendering with Csound opens up the ability to manipulate and edit widget values and automations in realtime during a render as well as the ability to use blueLive on Windows Because of its enhancement to the user experience while rendering and composing it is now the preferred method of using blue with Csound blue should work out of the box with the API if Csound is installed using the installers provided on SourceForge or installed via a package manager if on Linux Note blue currently only works with the API if the version of Csound used is compiled using 64 bit doubles The float version is not currently supported when using the API There are technical difficulties in supporting two different versions of Csound API in the same build and it is not known if or when the float build will be supported For users interested in using the float build of Csound with blue you will need to run blue using the command line Csound mode The Java API for Csound is split into two parts the csnd6 jar file as well as the lib_jcsound6 so native library this file is called jcsound6 dll on Windows and lib jcsound6 jnilib on Mac OSX For Csound 5 the names use csnd and jcsound instead blue comes with it s own copy of csnd jar and csnd6 jar to use the API from blue it will n
150. ndObjects can know about the instrument that the notes are generated for and can therefore do partial object rendering to start in the middle of a note This the is the case for those soundObjects which generate their own instruments such as the AudioFile SoundObject FrozenObject the LineObject and the ZakLineObject For those soundObjects if render is started within the middle of one of those you will hear audio and have control signals generated from the correct place and time AudioFile Accepts NoteProcessors no Allows for quickly putting in a soundfile on the timeline CeciliaModule Accepts NoteProcessors no Supports TimeBehavior no Note This SoundObject is unfinished and not enabled for normal use This information is left here for the future if the module is ever finished and reenabled Description The CeciliaModule is a soundObject that is meant to be compatible with modules for the program Cecilia http www sourceforge net projects cecilia created by Alexandre Burton and Jean Piche The CeciliaModule is not as fully featured as Cecilia itself as some features found in Cecilia do not make sense within the context of blue One major advantage of the CeciliaModule is the ability to have as manyinstances of a module on the timeline as one likes all without one worrying about variable name clashes or other issues blue automatically parses and renumbers instruments ftables and score statements so that they do not
151. ndr s Cabrera 2004 Revision History Revision 1 1 2005 07 15 Updated for new Instrument Library Revision 1 0 2004 11 30 First version of article This tutorial will explain how to start using blue It assumes a little knowledge of csound but not too much If you don t know csound understanding Dr Boulanger s toots at http www csounds com toots index html should be enough to get you through this tutorial Run blue using the appropriate script provided in the blue bin directory Use the bat file for windows the sh for linux and the command file for Mac OS X If blue is not running check the section Installation on the blue documentation We will first create an instrument Go to the orchestra tab and click on the button under the Orchestra title From the pop menu select Add Instrument gt GenericInstrument File Edit Project Tools Script Window Help Start Render From 0 0 score orchestra tables global uc B project properties sound file User Instrument Library Orchestra Bl Instrument Library Granular EET innlnstrumernt D vocoder ac Khinalnstrurnent BIL Blues ynthBuilder Instrument Editor Comments Instrument Library You will want to choose GenericInstrument when you want to create an ordinary csound instrument An empty untitled instrument iFs created To rename an instrument select it press F2 and type the new name e g Oscillator 123 Your First Project
152. ned up a world of possibilities 131 Tutorial 1 With the new external SoundObject it became possible to write script in any language within blue this means one could use not only scripting languages like perl Python shell scripts batch files JavaScript wscript etc but also run specially created text input for score generators like CMask nGen etc note cmask does not currently work within blue as it is unable to print to stdout more on this and possible ways around it later It also meant that other people s work on score generating libraries and scripts regardless of language now had the ability to be reused within blue As blue has developed the past couple of years from its initial goals of embedding timelines within timelines to its current state as a generic temporal framework and all around composition environment I ve always developed with the mindset of keeping this as open and generic as possible to build a tool that could grow as I knew I d always be exploring new things in composition These days the inclusion of these two SoundObjects the external SoundObject and the Python SoundObject are now becoming part of my everyday use as I work with blue allowing me to explore ideas rapidly creating objects and functions which follow the models of my musical work and which also serve as possible prototypes to new SoundObjects which I may later decide to create in Java and add to blue From my own experience I d
153. nformation about this all Java Python interpreter is available at http www jython org Jython is included with blue and being so it means that if you are using the Python SoundObject in blue you do not need Python installed on your computer The Python SoundObject is made in such a way that it in no way uses any Python installations you may or may not have on your computer but instead only uses what is a part of Jython If you want to add extra packages and libraries to use with the Python SoundObject you may copy them into the lib PythonLib directory or in the userhome blue pythonLib folder As an example of adding your own library you can see that already included with blue in the lib PythonLib directory is the pmask library by Maurizio Umberto Puxeddu currently I do not know where this library exists anymore on the internet if you know where it can be downloaded from please let me know and I will update this part of the documentation to better give credit to Maurizio So to clarify having a Python interpreter installed on your computer does not in any way affect the Python SoundObject within blue they are two completely different entities also if you have a library installed for use with your Python interpreter installed on your computer it will NOT be accessible to the Python SoundObject to use it you will have to copy it into the lib PythonLib directory of blue Note what you could do also is put the individual libraries you
154. nt to try listening your work file with the play button assuming you ve set up the command line under project properties to a command line that will output to speaker for more information on this please consult the blue user s manual What you should hear is that where you ve put your Sound SoundObject on the timeline i e starts at 5 seconds should play the sound you ve written in this example case a sine wave at 440hz at 30000 amp playing at equal volume out both left and right channels And that s pretty much it From here you might want to try copying the block and pasting it a few times changing some parameters embellishing your instrument definitions etc Also you might want to try mixing this with other soundObject i e write some instruments in the orchestra manager then write some genericScore soundObjects to play those instruments as well as use some Sound SoundObjects directly on the timeline What Happens When It Gets Processed If your confused as to what s going on it ll probably help to know exactly what happens when blue processes Sound SoundObjects blue whenever it goes to create a CSD file to use with a commandline or to generatoe out to a file has different stages of its compilation The relevant parts to know here are that all instruments from the orchestra manager are first generated but not yet put into the CSD Next all soundObjects are called to generate any instruments they might have This is where the Sou
155. nts largely setup in the same way as they were before For projects that were in the 0 94 0 beta series per project Instrument Libraries will be removed An option to import the instrument library will be presented to the user and if the user agrees a folder entitled Imported from Project will be added to the root of the user s InstrumentLibrary On the whole it is recommended to import the library review the instruments and simply remove what is not necessary Deleting the imported library is as simple as deleting the folder for the imported group Instruments in these project s Arrangements will be modified to hold copies of the instruments from the library as opposed to being references to instrument in the library Previously if two instruments in the Arrangement pointed to the same instrument in the per project InstrumentLibrary changes to the instrument in the library would affect all instruments in the Arrangment that pointed to it Now only copies are made and no references are used User Defined Opcodes Manager eoo blue 2 3 0 beta New Project Start Render From 0 0 To Play Time Loop lt 41 Ib 44 WI blueLive Recompile All Notes Off MIDI Input Score Orchestra UDO Tables GlobalOrchestra GlobalScore Project Pr Blue Live ser Defined Opcode Library User Defined Opcodes Opcode Name Out Types k In Types ioo0000 Code Comments
156. ny type as well as have automations assigned to the layer Unlike MIDI based studio software where layers are bound to a single instrument or channel in a mixer blue s SoundLayers are free to hold SoundObjects that generate any data for any instrument This design choice allows freedoms for you to design your project as you wish though at the expense of being able to implement some things which may be commonly found in MIDI based studio software To use the SoundObject system first create a SoundObject Layer Group using the Score Manager Dialog By default new projects in blue start with a single SoundObject Layer Group Next add as many layers as you would like to the LayerGroup You can then edit the names of the layers using the ScoreManager Dialog or back in the main Score area by double clicking the area on the left of the Layer s panel on the left On the timeline rt clicking on any soundLayer will show menu options for adding different types of SoundObjects pasting a SoundObject from the buffer if any SoundObjects in the buffer are available as well as other commands Copying and pasting of SoundObjects can also be done using ctrl c and ctrl click on a layer Once you have SoundObjects on the timeline you can click on them to select it or click in an empty area and drag to show a selection rectangle You can also add and remove SoundObjects to from the selectionn by holding shift when clicking Once selected you can move select
157. ocessing starts with the first NoteProcessor in the chain and the results of that are passed down the chain SoundObject Library Introduction The SoundObject Library is a place where one can store soundObjects from the timeline The library can simply be a place to store a soundObject idea that the user may want to user later but more importantly it allows for Instances of the soundObject to be made Instances of soundObjects point to and soundObject in the library and when the instance is generating its score it will actually call the soundObject in the library to generate its score and then apply it s own properties and noteProcessors to the generated score Updating a soundObject in the library will then update all instances of that soundObject This feature is useful to represent the idea of a motive with instances of the motive allowing to have transformations by use of noteProcessors Usage The general pattern of usage for the SoundObject Library entails 1 Add SoundObject to the Library This is done by selecting a soundObject right clicking the soundObject to open up the popup menu and selecting Add to SoundObject Library 2 After doing this your soundObject will have been added to the library and the soundObject on the timeline will have been replaced with an Instance soundObject which will be pointing to the soundObject now in the library 3 At this point the user can now take advantage of the library by making copies of
158. oesn t necessary need to generate score text at that time as mentioned above in the section called Case for Using the Python SoundObject 4 blue parses the score text making Note objects for blue to use applies scaling and translation of time to make the genreated notes start at the time of the PythonObject and last the subjective duration then applies any noteProcessors And that s it A More Complex Example For the following example I will make a very simple score generator that produces as many notes as I give as an argument the entire code for the script is def generateNotes numOfNotes ScoreText for i in range numOfNotes ScoreText il str i 2 3 4 5 n return scoreText Score generateNotes 10 The function I made generateNotes numOfNotes takes in the number of notes I want to generate for the above I wanted it to generate 10 notes and if I printed out the above generateNotes 10 I would have gotten the result il 0 2 3 4 5 BAS il 22 3 4 5 AD 3203 4 5 il 42345 PD 2 3 4 5 il 6 2 3 4 5 141 Tutorial 1 il 7 2 3 4 5 iq 8 2 3 4 5 il 9 2 3 4 5 This text string above is returned by the generateNotes function and assigned to the score variable blue then grabs that text from the score variable and parses it and the proceeds with compiling out the CSD file Note this is a very basic example of a note generator As yo
159. of the object You can add as many 1 statements as you need inside a genericScore Object We want our score to generate a note for instrument 1 our oscillator instrument We ll use the simple i101 127 Your First Project File Edit Project Tools Script Window Help Stan Render From 0 9 scare orchestra tables global uda project properties sound file root Mute Solo 0 00 EM eneric Editar Type blue saundObject Genericscare 11 0 2 343 Editing a Generic Score You can preview how the object will generate the csound score by pressing the te s t button on the right side of the panel Notice that the start time is the place where the object was placed on the timeline but the duration of the note is 2 seconds instead of the 1 second we typed By default blue creates genericScore objects set to scale the notes inside it Try dragging the right corner of the object to make it longer and try the test button again The duration of the note now scales to the size of the object Don t forget that when multiple notes are inside an object it is the note with the longest duration that scales to the size of the object and the rest of the notes are scaled proportionally Now let s create a second note a few seconds later First zoom out by pressing the button on the right endof the horizontal scroll bar Now select the genericScore we have created and press ctrl C or command C on Mac and
160. ork and use your libraries for others In this case blue can handle that in that you can call your libraries you ve developed and script the parts you want to script within blue as well handle all of the standard csound score type work Within blue there are currently two main objects for scripting the Python SoundObject and the external SoundObject The external SoundObject runs scripts outside of blue and brings the results back into blue and the execution of those scripts is as fast as it would be running the script outside of blue With the external SoundObject one may also choose from a variety of scripting and score generating languages to use The Python SoundObject is limited to Python and runs Python scripts much slower than they would be for running a Python script outside of blue using the external SoundObject However the PythonObject has 133 Tutorial 1 two main features which may influence your decision in which to use it or not it does not require Python to be installed on the system as it uses Jython to interpret the script Jython is an all Java implmentation of the Python interpreter for more information about Jython visit http www jython org and it does not reinitialize the interpreter between uses The second point regarding the Python SoundObject may need some explanation by not reinitializing the interpreter between uses all Python SoundObjects in blue all share the same interpreter By doing this you ca
161. ork with blue To work around this you can install a newer version of Csound if available i e from a testing repo or compile Csound yourself and ensure you are using SWIG version 2 0 or greater Installing Csound blue is able to interact with Csound either by calling Csound like a command line program classic blue or by directly interacting with Csound via the Csound API Instructions on setting up blue for each method is described below as well as discussion on benefits and limitations Using blue with command line Csound This may be considered classical blue usage and interaction with Csound as this was the method by which blue ran with Csound for the first eight years in existance The way blue operates in this mode is by rendering the blue project into a temporary CSD file on disk then calling Csound with that temporary CSD file in the same way as if you were on a command line shell and executing Csound yourself with that file The benefit to this mode of Csound usage is that it is easier to switch out your version of Csound or use multiple versions of Csound on the same computer It is also a little more stable than using the API in that if Csound crashes for some reason it won t take down blue with it Also it may be more performant to use the command line mode These benefits however need to be weighed against the benefits of using the API which is described below To use the command line version one needs to set up the Csou
162. ortion TL t Libi n fi i t 0 64696 I 0 20 5 moogladder 1200 OSC 2 Waveform Squ Attack Decay Sustain Release Depth PulseWidth Detune VCF Env X ye 5 XE 4 e X O Disable 0050 10 25 I 66 Freq OSC VCF UFO OF OE OSC 3 Disable v 2 066 10 957 0 083 0 090 0 71996 0 20000 1 M m Triangle no ramp Detune Tokbox Mix Enabled Male Spoken 2 0 2 th Miso m rm fl Pe Mito Oo a D D Dn D fmt Oo n 8 a Orchestra Manager The Orchestra Manager is where the user organizes and edits the orchestra for the project as well as their user Instrument Library User Instrument Library In the User Instrument Library the tree pictured on the left you can create instruments as well as categorize them into groups Most actions in this editor are accessible by right clicking with the mouse to access popup menus keyboard shortcuts of ctrl x ctrl c and ctrl v work for cutting copying and pasting nodes of the tree To edit the name of Instruments or Groups double click the name in the tree or hilight the node and press F2 This library of instruments is available across projects and is useful for building up and organizing a personal instrument library To copy instruments into the library from the project s Orchestra you can drag and drop the instrument on the library t
163. otes then translate them to start at the start of the soundObject and then scale them so that they take up the duration of the soundObject If you had a five note soundObject with all notes have a duration of 1 second all starting one after the other with the soundObject starting at 0 seconds on the timeline and if you used a SubListProcessor with start of 1 and end of 4 you d end up with four notes being generated the first four from the original soundObject starting a 0 seconds on the timeline with each notes duration lasting 1 25 seconds each starting one right after the other The following score il il 34 il FP when processed with a SubList processor with start 2 and end 3 would result in 001 2 111 013 The p2 p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject with time behavior set to scale Switch Processor parameters pfield1 pfield2 A Switch Processor switches pfield1 with pfield2 for all notes in SoundObject It is useful in conjunction with RetrogradeProcessor when reversing notes that have start and end values in pfields i e inum start dur start end il 0 1 8 04 8 00 il 1 2 8 00 8 07 with just retrograde processor becomes inum start dur start end iT 0 2 8 00 8 07 107 Reference il 2 1 8 04 8 00 with retrograde and switch on p4 and p5 becomes inum start dur start end il 0 2 8 07 8 00 il 2 1 8 00 8 04 Time Warp Processor par
164. otes that affect global variables while I have one instrument thatuses those global variables This could work though if you repackage the set of soundObjects into a polyObject Probably best to generalize as Your soundObject must be self contained All sound output from instruments go directly out or piped through always on instruments that most likely should take advantage of the total dur variable as well as the new processing start variable more about this when I release but together with freezing this lets you set the start time of always on instruments to the first time where non frozen soundObjects occur so if the first half of your piece is frozen and you re unfrozen stuff is in the second half you don t need always on instruments to be turned on until the second half as the first half is routed to outs This system is tested with 2 channel pieces I m not sure if this will work with higher number of channels but I don t see why it wouldn t Changing the number of channels on the project after a freeze may cause Csound errors when rendering the frozen soundObject can be remedied by unfreezing and refreezing Frozen files are referenced relatively to the project file so you are free to move your project directory around or rename it and the frozen files will work fine Auditioning SoundObjects You are able to quickly audition individual SoundObjects or groups of SoundObjects on the timeline This can be very useful
165. ound instruments Open up the track properties editor using the toggle button above the right scroll bar Afterwards select a track by clicking the name panel above a track Selecting a track will populate the track properties editor as well as hilight the name panel with a green border A track s properties consist of a Name Note Template Instrument ID and Columns descriptions of the values are listed below Track Properties Name The name property is used only for reference editing the name changes the title shown on the name panel and is for the user s reference Note Template The note template is used when generating the notes for the track Items in the template that are within and tags will be replaced by values either from the Tracker START and DUR the Instrument ID INSTR ID or values from the columns using the column s name as a key i e if a column is called space when generating a note for the track any value in the space column will replace the space text in the note template Note templates will generally follow the form i INSTR ID START lt DUR gt and then have tag keys for each column for the track Instrument Instrument name or number to be used when replacing INSTR ID in Note template strings Columns Each track has a minimum of one configurable column the tied note is a feature of all tracks and is not a part of this editor and is user configurable to add as many columns as the use
166. overlap between the first trigger and the second trigger When Repeat is on it will always finish out the current number of beats in the repeat at the current tempo before applying any changes to tempo and repeat Modifyications to tempo and repeat will apply then on the next repeat trigger SCO Pad Note This feature will likely be removed in a future release 39 Getting Started This is an experimental feature to record MIDI input in a manner similar to to notation programs press keys then press 4 for a quarter note 8 for and 8th note etc This feature requires MIDI Input to be turned on This feature is experimental at this time Options The options panel allows setting up parameters for blue Live Currently it contains options for modifying the commandline string used when running blueLive For most users these modification will not be necessary and the default commandline used will be sufficient Working with MIDI blue s MIDI system when enabled will listen to configured MIDI devices for notes map the key and velocity and generate Csound notes to achieve MIDI like note on and note off type behavior This allows working with a MIDI keyboard in realtime with your project instruments without modifying your instruments specifically for MIDI This also means that when blue s MIDI system is enabled Csound MIDI processing should be disabled for your project To configure what MIDI devices to use go to the program
167. parate my concerns as the author of blue I concern myself with finding new ways to organize and manipulate SoundObjects and as a SoundObject author I concern myself just with making objects that generate notes leaving the scheduling of that SoundObject to the framework But not everyone programs in Java and there are also scripts and script libraries to be used in other languages already made Having seen that the SoundObject system and temporal framework of blue was a pretty open architecture I decided at the time to explore the possibilities of using script within blue by creating the Python SoundObject so that i could use maurizio umberto puxeddu s Python pmask library within blue what that allowed was for the ability to write Python scripts within blue blue executing and bringing back in the generated notes from the Python script and integrating that with the other notes of the native Java SoundObjects After successfully developing and proving the possibility to myself I continued on to build other SoundObjects as user s requested or as I desired for my own compositional explorations One day some time back a user suggested that I build a generic external SoundObject that would let you write any script within blue provide a commandline to be used and have blue write the script to a temporary file run the commandline on it and bring the generated notes back into blue busy at the time Ilater did build that SoundObject and it ope
168. put a label In the screenshot above the Time Display is set to show a label in units of time and at every 5 0 seconds 89 Reference Using the Note Canvas To enter notes hold down the shift key and press the left mouse button down on the canvas A note will be entered where you pressed and will be set to resize as you move the mouse around When you finally release the mouse the note will be finished entering After that you can select notes by clicking on them or drag and selecting notes by marquee You can also press the shift key and click on notes to add to the currently selected notes You can then drag the notes around by click a selected note and dragging To resize a note select a single note and after hilighted move the mouse to the right edge of the selected now and then click and drag To remove a note or notes select the notes then press the del key To cut or copy a note select a single note only one note in the buffer is currently supported then press ctrl x or ctrl c to cut or copy respectively To paste ctrl click on the PianoNote canvas This is the same behavior as pasting soundObjects on the main score timeline To edit a note s template select a single note After selecting a note the text field for editing the note s template text will be enabled Here you can then edit the note s values For more Information See the example blue file in the blue examples soundObjects folder PolyObje
169. quirements o er een ebd EI d n 150 Getting the SourceS 150 Maintaining a Version of blue from CVS 150 List of Tables 1 1 Shortcuts Tor the Timeline iir rt ER e PO IR RU ER ee E Er er Pme 23 1 2 Shortcuts for the Python Console sss em eme hene 51 LB Key Values 5o EDD rr RED e ERES PSP RR ER 54 C 55 1 5 M OE 76 3 2 Parameter Modifier Support emen me hehe hee mee men rennen 76 3 3 Keyboard Shortc lts reine re EP ER e SERRE 96 3 4 Keyboard Note Mode ieste ee a a esee ERE EE TR Eds 97 3 5 Widget Values ae ctr tte tete rere dads eter E ket te ke Parte tee der SA 114 3 6 General Shortcuts nM ERI ERES o ETE aes 116 3 7 Rendering nem Deren ot ER E d PR ed 117 3 8 Score Timeline UI PME In 117 3 9 Orchestra Manager toi tere ete EE CET GARRETT FRE eC etate E it ege ER se go Et d 118 3 10 Ina EE 118 3 11 Editing GenericScore PythonObject RhinoObject eee een eens 118 B 1 Compatibility Breaks E EEA 120 vi Preface blue is my tool for composing with Csound I originally created it for its ability to organize SoundObjects in time as well as to organize and autom
170. r instrument This is broken up into different soundObjects and layers if sections s statement are found in the score From the CsScore blue will only import f i and s statements Other score statements are not currently supported at this time Importing MIDI Files blue is able to import MIDI files and set up a blue project file from the note information in the MIDI file using the settings given by the user To import a MIDI file choose the Import MIDI File option from the File menu Next using the file dialog to locate the MIDI file to import After selecting the desired file blue will show the following MIDI Import Settings dialog for you to configure how you would like to import the MIDI note information Note blue will only show information for tracks where note data was found 53 Getting Started r MIDI Import Settings L Instrument ID Mote Template i lt INSTR_ID gt lt 5 gt i lt START i lt INSTR_ID gt lt 5 gt i lt INSTR_ID gt lt START gt Ty LAL MI MIDI Import Settings The table column information is as follows MIDI Import Settings Track The original MIDI track number to which this setting is to be applied to This column is not editable is for reference purpose only Instrument ID The Csound instrument ID to use for this track This will replace the lt INSTR_ID gt key within the note template This value is treated as a string to
171. r needs for the values to use in their notes for their instruments Columns are added and removed using the Columns table and can be organized by pushing up and down in the table which will move their order left and right in the main tracking area To edit the name of the Column use the Columns table to edit the name of the column Each Column also has a type The type information is used by the tracker when entering data to verify that the data being input is of that column s type as well as used when using shortcuts to manipulate data in that column Column Properties PCH Csound PCH format Entering data will verify that data is in the octave pitch format Using the increment and decrement value shortcuts will propertly add or subtract one to pitch value i e incrementing the value of 8 11 will result in 9 00 94 Reference blue PCH The blue PCH format is like the Csound PCH format except that the pitch part is always a whole number integer and is the scale degree of the selected Scale A valid value in Csound PCH such as 8 01 is not valid in Blue PCH as 01 is not an integer the equivalent in blue PCH would be 8 1 Using blue PCH allows for using Scala scale files to do microtonal tracking To choose a Scala scale use the button to open up a file selector to choose a Scala scale Afterwards enter in the base frequency for the scale the default is 261 62558 or middle c The output frequencies checkbox will determine
172. r the min and max and a postive integer for the pfield The following score 11 0 2 80 il 80 iT 80 il 80 when processed with an RandomAddProcessor with min set to 0 0 max set to 1 0 and pfield set to 4 resulted in the following on one pass il 0 0 0 5 80 92294 il 0 5 0 5 80 50539 il 1 0 0 5 80 112495 il 1 5 0 5 80 93934 The p2 and p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject with time behavior set to scale The above is an example of random values and because it is random the results will be different on another processing pass Hint One useful way to use this noteProcessor is as a way to humanize velocity or pitch values values Random Multiply Processor Parameters pfield min max The RandomMultiplyProcessor takes a pfield to apply the random multiply to as well as a min and max for the boundaries of the random values When applied it will multiply a random value for each note in the assigned pfield using a new random value per note The RandomMultiplyProcessor expects either a positive or negative float value for the min and max and a postive integer for the pfield The following score i102 80 il 80 il 80 XT 2890 when processed with an RandomMultiplyProcessor with min set to 1 0 max set to 2 0 and pfield set to 4 results in the following il 0 0 0 5 85 553246 il 0 5 0 5 148 94167 iL 1 0 0 5 125 57565 rl Veo 0 5 97 00755 The p2 and p3 times
173. rameter will be lost once a new parameter type is chosen Move the selected Parameter to before the previous Parameter Example Push up parameter at pfield 5 to pfield 4 moving what was previously at 4 to 5 Move the selected Parameter to after the next Parameter Example Push down parameter at pfield 4 to pfield 5 moving what was previously at 5 to 4 Enable disable using a Mask with this parameter If enabled the Mask editor will appear and if disabled the Mask editor will disappear This menu option will not show for those Parameters that do not support Masks Enable disable using a Quantizer with this parameter If enabled the Quantizer editor will appear and if disabled the Quantizer editor will disappear This menu option will not show for those Parameters that do not support Quantizers Enable disable using an Accumulator with this parameter If enabled the Accumulator editor will appear and if disabled the Accumulator editor will disappear This menu option will not show for those Parameters which do not support Accumulators Beyond the basics of moving around Parameters adding new ones and choosing whether to enable Masks Quantizeres and Accumulators one can also choose to show hide Parameters by using the popup menu that appears when choosing the down arrow button in the JMask title bar as shown in the screenshot below 78 Reference bi H Parameter 1 IM Parameter 2 H Parameter IM
174. ree to make a copy of the instrument To copy an instrument from the Library to the project s orchestra you can similarly drag and drop an instrument from the Library to the Orchestra You may also use cut copy paste to move instrument from one to the other Orchestra The Orchestra panel located in the top left of the picture is where you will place your instruments to be used for your project The button allows you to create new instruments from one of the available Blue instrument types You can also right click on the Orchestra to show options for copying pasting Once instruments are in the Orchestra you can edit what their instrument ID s these may be either numbers or strings i e 3 for instr 3 violin for instr violin Selecting an instrument will show its editor in the Instrument editor section on the right 24 Getting Started Instrument Editor On the right hand side of the Orchestra Manager is the area for editing instruments To make more space available for editing an instrument you can drag the split pane splitter to the left or double click the splitter to have it collapse to the left hand side Each blue instrument type has its own editor Note if you are editing and instrument from the Library blue will show a green border with the title Editing Library Instrument to help notify you what instrument you are editing Legacy Projects For projects before 0 94 0 imported projects will have their instrume
175. roject s sr kr and nchnls and determine the csound executable and flags The main thing to set here is the command line to call csound The command line depends entirely on your setup and operating system In Linux csound is usually located in an executable directory so just using csound works for most setups In Windows you may need to specify the full path for the location of the csound executable Note that after the executable name you can add flags to determine how csound will process the csd generated by blue For example you may want to use a real time flag for this project like o dacO or P depending on your system An important thing to note here is that when using the play button the flags used are the ones inside te command line The lt CsOptions gt below only affect the generation of external csd s using the Generate CSD to screen file commands from the menu When you are ready to compile your csd press the play button on the upper right corner or press F9 If you set the output for realtime you should hear the tones produced by the oscillator 130 sCOre orchestra tables global uda project properties sound file GenericSca Scripting Steven Yi 2002 Revision History Revision 1 1 2004 11 7 Converted to DocBook Some information revised as no longer applicable Revision 1 0 2002 10 28 First version of article Introduction The blue music composition environment entails the use of ti
176. rses it as a text score then proceeds to do the standard operations of scaling and translating the notes in time then applying any noteProcessors which may have been added to it Also should you need the variable blueDuration is assigned the value of the subjective duration of the PythonObject on the timeline So within your scripts you have access to the duration of the SoundObject should you want to make your script use that for any purpose you might have one example might be that you have a score generating function that depends on duration maybe if it has less duration it produces notes with louder amplitude and than if it has a longer duration A Simple Example Let s say you re writing a simple Python script score il 0 2 3 4 5 n 1 the first thing blue does is clear the score variable in the interpreter and assign the variable blueDuration the value of the duration of the SoundObject on the timeline For this example it does not affect the outcome of the score generated 2 Next blue runs the script in this case the only thing that happens is that the 140 Tutorial 1 score variable is being assigned the text string of a single note along with a newline 3 At the end of the script s execution the score variable is read the score variable may or may not have anything assigned to it but the script within the PythonObject is still run this allows for the possibility of code that needs to be run but d
177. rst section on the left within a splitpane that separates them from the SubChannels Channels can be set to route to either SubChannels or directly to the Master Channel SubChannels SubChannels are user created and are located in the center section of the Mixer Dialog on the right side of the splitpane Channels can be set to route to SubChannels and SubChannels can route into other SubChannels or out to the Master Channel Master Channel The Master Channel is located on the right side of the Mixer Dialog There is only one master Channel per project which all channel and subchannel signals ultimately route through Each channel allows for applying effects to the incoming signal either pre or post fader Using the Mixer For most MIDI based music composition environments the typical user interaction with a Mixer system is that users first create tracks on a timeline and for each track an audio channel is automatically bound in the mixer The user then selects an instrument for that track if it is a MIDI track MIDI information from the track is routed to the instrument and that instrument generates audio signals If the instrument happens to be a software synthesizer the audio signals are then usually taken from the instrument and routed out to the Mixer channel that has been bound to that track However since blue does not bind music information on a SoundLayer to an instrument you can have heterogenous note data generated in any sound
178. rtcuts Description F9 Render project using projects real time render options shift F9 Render to Disk and Play using project s disk render options and playing with blue s builtin sound file player ctrl shift F9 Render to Disk using project s disk render options Table 3 8 Score Timeline Shortcuts Description ctrl c copy selected soundObject s ctrl x cut selected soundObject s ctrl d duplicate selected soundObject s and place directly after originals ctrl r the repeat selected SoundObjects by copying and placing one after the other n number of times where n is a number value entered by the user user is prompted with a dialog to enter number of times to repeat ctrl click paste soundObject s from buffer where clicked shift click shift click on timeline paste soundObjects from buffer as a PolyObject where clicked if only one sound object is in the buffer it will be pasted as the type it is and not a PolyObject when selecting soundObjects adds soundObject to selected if not currently selected and vice versa double click if selecting on timeline select all soundObjects on layer where mouse clicked ctrl t show quick time dialog right click pops up a popup menu for adding soundObjects and other tasks left click drag creates a selection marquee for selecting multiple soundObjects when Score mode alt 1 switch to Score mode alt 2 switch to Sing
179. se my script This will try to load the script from Users me blue script clojure my script clj or path to blueProject script clojure script clj External SoundObject Accepts NoteProcessors no Allows you to write script within blue and execute an external program on that script bringing in generated notes back into blue There is a field for command line as well as a text area for your script When this soundObject is called for generating it s notes it will write the text within the text area into a temp file and then use the user supplied command line to execute on that temp file When blue runs the commandline it defaults to appending the temp file s name to the end of the commandline For example if you wrote a perl script in the text area and used a commandline of perl then when blue runs the command it would be something like perl the path to the tempFile If you need to explicitly put the name of the temp file somewhere else in the command line than the end you can use infile in your commandline For example if you needed something like myCommand somefileName w d some other flags and had to have it in that order you could type myCommand infile w d 73 Reference some other flags and blue will replace that Sinfile with the temp file s name instead of appending it to the end When designing your scripts that you will be using with external programs you should either set commandline fl
180. soundLayer after the currently selected soundLayer if no soundLayers are selected then it will add one to the end of the list the button will remove any selected soundLayers it should ask for a confirmation before removing any layers 20 Getting Started The Timeline Below the polyObject bar on the right is the main time line it shows the time line for the currently editted polyObject The buttons next to the scrollbars are used to zoom in on the time line and those settings will be maintained between work sessions Tempo Editor b root Wi Use Tempa Ld x 0 BO b pm The tempo editor is an optional use feature that allows editing of overall tempo for a project using a line editor This feature starts off as disabled and closed When in this state whatever tempo values are saved will show as dark gray line that is uneditable To enable the use of the tempo editor select the checkbox marked Use Tempo Selecting this will redraw the tempo line in green To open up the tempo editor for a larger view and for editing select the down arrow button next to the Use Tempo checkbox Like other line editor objects in blue left clicking on an area where there is no point will insert a new point while hovering over an existing point and pressing down then dragging will allow moving of that point Right clicking a point will delete a point If right clicking the tempo editor when not on a point the following popup
181. ss that exists in the classpath When blue generates notes from a SoundObject the SoundObject first generates its Notes as a NoteList then NoteProcessors are called one at a time to process that NoteList in place For the PythonProcessor before any of the user written code is run the generated NoteList is first added and defined in the memory space as noteList From there the script for the PythonProcessor should treat noteList as the list of Note objects that have been generated The NoteList and Note objects are the very same and have the same methods and properties as those in the Java code so one must work with them the same way as one would in Java The following code shows an example of the Python Processor The code first imports the random module then for every note in the noteList it creates a random space variable between the values of 1 and 1 then assigns that to pfield 7 of the note This example code is used in the blue examples noteProcessors pythonProcessor blue and can be run within blue to hear the example import random for i in noteList newVal str 2 random random 1 i setPField newVal 7 Random Add Processor Parameters pfield min max The RandomAddProcessor generates a random value between min and max and adds it to the designated pfield for all notes A random value is generated for each note 103 Reference The RandomAddProcessor expects either a positive or negative float value fo
182. ste soundObject s from buffer where clicked shift click paste soundObject s from buffer as a PolyObject where clicked shift click double click when selecting soundObjects adds soundObject to selected if not currently selected and vice versa if selecting on timeline select all soundObjects on layer where mouse clicked ctrl d duplicate selected SoundObjects place immediately after the originals ctrl r repeat selected SoundObjects by copying and placing one after the other n number of times where n is a number value entered by the user user is prompted with a dialog to enter number of times to repeat ctrl drag if ctrl is held down when drag is initiated of selected SoundObjects a copy of the originals is made and left at their original times ctrl t show quick time dialog alt 1 switch to Score mode alt 2 switch to Single Line mode alt 3 switch to Multi Line mode 23 Getting Started Orchestra Manager eoo blue 2 3 0 beta timeSphere blue Start Render From 0 0 Play Time 2d Loop 41 Ib 44 b WI blueLive Recompile All Notes Off MIDI Input Orchestra UDO Tal LT Inl ument Editor th Builder Code UDO Current Preset Snapshots Soft and Shy Update Edit Enabled OSC 1 Attack Decay Sustain Release Waveform Sawtooth Amp Env Xx PulseWidth ADSR oso User Instrument e 9 CutoffResonance Dist
183. t The editor for the SoundObject will appear below Note Editing the SoundObject in the library will affect all instances of that SoundObject Parameter Automation Introduction Blue allows for a few ways to enter in values to automate parameters over time The parameters that can be automated are those in BlueSynthBuilder Instruments Mixer Effects Mixer Sends and Mixer Volumes The following sections will describe how to use Parameter Automation and technical details in how this all works within the context of blue and Csound Available Parameters Besides the Volume sliders in the mixer and level amount on mixer sends the following GUI Parameters are automatable when found in BlueSynthBuilder instruments and Mixer Effects Knob HSlider HSliderBank VSlider VSliderBank XYController Dropdown Checkbox Assigning Parameters Automations for Parameters are assignable to SoundObject LayerGroup Layers that exist in the root Score by selecting from the popup menu that appears when selecting the A button on a SoundLayer s panel on the left of the timeline The menu shows what Parameters are available to use from Instruments and the 65 Concepts Mixer Those with normal color text are Parameters which are not currently automated those in green are ones currently automated in that SoundLayer and those in orange are ones which are currently automated on a different SoundLayer Selecting normal color
184. t holds sounds Now we can put whatever sounds we want in the box but we can also put smaller boxes inside the main box these smaller boxes are our PolyObjects We can put sounds inside the smaller boxes just like we can in the big box and we can arrange them in the same manner too When we put sound A in the upper right comer of a smaller box it will stay in that corner no matter where we move our box inside of the bigger box However it is the position and arrangement of the sounds themselves relative to the main score that is important and is ultimately the reason to use PolyObjects With sound A in the upper right corner of our small box its relative position in the main box will be dependent on the smaller box s position in the big box Keep in mind too that we can put boxes inside of boxes inside of boxes as many layers as we like And when you realize that you can change the sounds inside of any box by applying a NoteProcessor to it like making the box metal instead of cardboard you begin to see the power of using PolyObjects The way it works is you create a PolyObject in a SoundLayer like you would any other SoundObject by right clicking on the SoundLayer and selecting Add New PolyObject it should be at the very top After doing this the PolyObject is empty and will not generate any notes in its current state You have to double click on it in order to edit the contents of the PolyObject Once you re editing the empty PolyObject
185. t level implementation there is a separation of a note as well as an instrument but within blue that separation is hidden from the user From the user s point of view all they have to do is write their sounds on the timeline and they don t have to worry about numbering the instruments or creating notes for that instrument Usage Scenarios and Patterns Prototyping Sketching Most of the time I ve found myself using the Sound SoundObject at the start of a project when I m creating new sounds for a piece I find it s good a prototyping tool initially working with sounds on the scoreTimeCanvas this is the name of java object that is the main score timeline area Usually when I write instruments in the Sound SoundObject I define all of the i time variables in a way that will facilitate easy conversion to full fledged instruments should I later want to do so This is a general instrument writing pattern of mine that I would do anyways even before I had blue to use For example I might be designing an sound on the timeline with the something like the following at the top of the text ipch cpspch 8 02 iamp ampdb 80 ispace 2 Later when I get to a point after sketching out some sounds and finding I like how things are beginning to flow in the piece I find that 1 usually want to start working with the sounds then as instruments At this point I normally convert the Sound SoundObject to a genericScore object done by rt clicking on the so
186. t square setting the connection between the masses to either 1 or 0 After editing press Save to save out the matrix to a file Youcan also click the Random button to create a randomized matrix 47 Getting Started Sound Font Viewer fworkfaudio fst Instruments Presets Chinese Orchestra Da Tan Gu Freset Yamaha Grand Piano Chinese Orchestra Dy Luo 118 1 Bright Yamaha Grand 2 Electric Piano Chinese Orchestra Er Hu 7 4l 3 Honky Tonk Chinese Orchestra Gao Hu 48 4 Rhodes EP 5 Legend EP 2 Chinese Orchestra Guan fOr 5 Harpsichard Chinese Orchestra Liu Qin 18 D Clavinet E Celesta Chinese Orchestra Mu Yu 22 4 Glockenspiel Chinese Orchestra Pai Gu 68 19 Music Box 11 vibraphone Chinese Orchestra Pipa 2 7 KB 12 Marimba Chinese Orchestra Ruan 42k 13 ue suede 14 Tubular Bells Chinese Orchestra Zheng 1 15 Dulcimer 16 DrawbarOrgan Chinese Percussion 5C8 amp 8 Pra 17 Percussive Organ Fluids GM SF2 18 Rack Organ 19 Church Organ Harp rch sfz 20 Reed Organ Indian Ensemble 52 21 Accordian 22 Harmonica Instruments Squidfant Orchesth 23 Bandanean MadernBeatsFreekit st 24 Nyon string Guitar 25 Steel String Guitar Muted violin 572 26 Jazz Guitar af Clean Guitar x Recorder Campbells 25 T Palm Muted Guitar QOSep2 2 SF2 29 Overdrive Guitar 30 Distortion Guitar acousticBass sf2 31 Guitar Harmanics JN 32 Acoustic Bass Sound Font Viewer Ge
187. te Template string i INSTR ID START DUR FREQ 0 1 1 Will have the INSTR ID replaced with the value set in the Piano Roll properties START replaced the start time for the note lt DUR gt replaced with the duration of the note and FREQ replaced with either a frequency or PCH value depending on how the Piano Roll is configured in its properties The other values will pass through as part of the note Warning Caution should be used when creating a Note Template string to make sure that there are enough spaces allowed between replacement strings For example the following i INSTR ID START DUR FREQ FREQ 0 1 1 87 Reference would result in il 0 2 440 440 011 while the following i INSTR ID START lt DUR gt lt FREQ gt lt FREQ gt 0 1 1 which does not have proper space between the two FREQ tags results in il 0 2 440440 011 Piano Roll Properties The PianoRoll requires a bit of configuration before using The properties page below shows the properties that should be configure before using the actual note drawing canvas Properties InstrumentID 1 Note Template i INSTR ID START DUR lt FREQ gt FREQ 8001 Scale pohlen p etscl Base Frequency 261 Pech Generation Frequency Pch PianoRoll Properties Instrument ID Instrument name or number to be used when replacing INSTR ID in Note template s
188. text will enable automation for that parameter on the SoundLayer while selecting a green colored text one will disable automation for that parameter and selecting an orange one will move it from the layer it is currently on to the one being worked with Score Timeline Modes The Score timeline has three different modes Score This is the primary mode for adding and editing SoundObjects Parameter Automations will be drawn but are not editable in this mode Single Line This is the primary mode for editing line points for Parameter Automations The user is able to edit a single line at a time per SoundLayer and can enter and remove points modify points by dragging them as well as selecting a region and move the the points by dragging the region While dragging the region the region will show that data will overwrite the area dragged to This overwriting will not be committed however until the user releases the mouse button Multi Line This is the mode for selecting and moving line points for all Parameter Automations on a single or multiple SoundLayers The use can click and drag to create a selection region then click within the selection region to move all points from all lines within the region While dragging the region the region will show that data will overwrite the area dragged to This overwriting will not be committed however until the user releases the mouse button Editing Automations To edit line values in a Parameter Automa
189. the following way blueMixerOut subChannelName asigl asig2 asig3 Using this form the asig signals will be mixed into the subChannel given by name This form is available to use within Instruments but is also very useful to use when working Sound SoundObjects and AudioFile SoundObjects which do not have channels created for them This way you can route the output of an AudioFile to a named subchannel and apply Effects etc Effects Effects in blue are implemented as User Defined Opcodes and understanding of how User Defined Opcodes work in Csound is recommended before creating Effects Understanding how UDO s work however is not necessary if one simply wants to use Effects The workflow for using Effects with your Mixer channels is 1 Populate your Effects Library by either creating effects or importing them from blueShare 2 In the Mixer choose either the pre fader or post fader effects bin to add effects Right click on the bins to open up a popup menu that shows effects that are currently in your library from which to choose to insert 3 In the Mixer choose either the pre fader or post fader effects bin to add effects Right click on the bins to open up a popup menu that shows effects that are currently in your library from which to choose to insert 4 Configure your effect by double clicking it in the effects bin Double clicking the effect will open up a dialog that shows the effect s graphical user interface
190. ting score output the speed difference does become an issue If speed is an issue then you might choose to use the external SoundObject if the benefits listed below aren t an issue Also if you have an existing Python interpreter installed on your computer and have libraries installed and are just simply used to your setup then it might be just plain easier to use your existing Python setup rather than dealing with where things are in blue and managing having libraries installed for both the resident Python interpreter and blue s PythonLib And to add to all of that you may be using features which are part of the most recent Python interpeter version and those features may not be available as part of Jython more information as to what Jython supports is available at the Jython homepage http www jython org Also if you re using libraries which call native code they will not work with Jython So if the Python SoundObject is slower if you have to manage another set of libraries and you might not have all of the features of standard Python available why use the Python SoundObject at all The Case for Using the Python SoundObject Now just to let you know I use exclusively the Python SoundObject when I m doing Python scripts in blue I haven t come across any of the standard libraries I ve needed that were t included with Jython and if it s a sign of anything Maurizio Umberto Puxeddu s pmask library works fine with the PythonObject
191. tion first switch to Single Line mode Then for the desired SoundLayer select which of the assigned parameters to edit This can be done either by using the SoundLayer Edit Panel s Parameter selector found on the second row below the row with mute solo etc only shown when SoundLayer size is greater than 1 or by right clicking the SoundLayer in the main area and selecting from the popup menu the actively editable Parameter Automation will be disabled from the popup menu Once a parameter is selected the user can change the color of the line by using the color box next to the parameter selector panel on the SoundLayer Edit Panel To add new points use the mouse and mouse over to where you would like to add a point and press the left mouse button After pressing the point will be added and the user can drag to modify the just entered point Releasing the button will complete the addition of the line point To edit an existing point mouse over a point until it is highlighted in red then press the left mouse button drag and release when finished To remove an existing point mouse over a point until it is highlighted and press the right mouse button For finer control over the line points right click on the parameter line panel when not over an existing line point A popup menu will appear and select Edit Line Points A dialog showing a table of line points with time values in one column and parameter values in a second column The user ca
192. tion planned for after blue 2 3 0 csoundrc Editor csoundrc Editor rtaudiospa bl o dac d ignore csoptsstrue Users stevenyi csoundre Save Close csoundre Editor The csoundrc Editor tool allows for editing the system wide csoundrc file The editor is accessible from the Tools menu and launching it will open up the file pointed to by the environment variable CSOUNDRC or search for the file in SHOME csoundrc If neither is found the editor will open up with a file pointing to SHOME csoundrc When the dialog opens the contents if a file is found is shown to edit in a simple text area The absolute path of the file found is shown in the bottom left hand side Pressing the Save button will save the contents and close the dialog and pressing the Close button will close the dialog without changes For more information about csoundrc please view the Csound Manual entry for Command Line Parameter File csoundrc http www csounds com manual html CommandUnifileParFile html 45 Getting Started Scanned Synthesis Matrix Editor 77727 Scanned Synthesis Matrix Editor random Scanned Synthesis Matrix Editor Getting Started The Scanned Synthesis Matrix Editor tools allows for editing and creating matrix files used by the Scanned Synthesis opcodes in Csound Using New will ask what size matrix to create For editing click anywhere on the matrix This will either turn on or turn off tha
193. tiplyString to see how much should be multiplied The user should be careful to remember that SoundObjects do not apply scaling of score until after processing with noteProcessors Therefore the beat values given in the LineMultiplyString were to be applied against the beat values of the original score Multiply Processor Parameters value pfield 101 Reference The MultiplyProcessor works like the addProcessor but multiplies the given pfield by the value The following score 11 0 2 80 iL 4 280 LL 780 il 80 If processed with a MultiplyProcessor with value 2 and pfield 4 would result in i1 0 0 0 5 160 0 il 0 5 05 56050 il 1 0 0 5 160 0 Lh Wed 039 2160 0 The p2 and p3 times above are post processing for a 2 second duration soundObject with time behavior set to scale Pch Add Processor Parameters pfield value The PchAddProcessor works like the AddProcessor but is used with pfields written in Csound pch notation i e 8 00 7 11 9 03 The value field unlike the AddProcessor is a whole number representing the number of scale degrees in which to add to the pch value If a soundObject has notes where p5 is a pch value and you the notes have values of 8 00 8 04 8 07 and 9 00 i102 8 00 il 8 04 il 8 07 rl 9 00 If a PchAddProcessor with value 7 and pfield 5 is used after processing the score would result in il 0 0 0 5 8 07 10 0065 il 1 0 0 5 9 02 dk Wea Q5 9 07 The p2 and
194. to computer without problem Frozen soundObjects can be unfrozen at anytime returning the original soundObject and removing the frozen wave file To freeze a soundObject select one or many soundObjects on the timeline rt click on a selected soundObject and then select Freeze Unfreeze SoundObjects To unfreeze select one or many frozen soundObjects and select the same menu option On the timeline if your soundObject rendered wave is longer in duration than the original soundObject s duration as is the case if you have reverb processing the frozen soundObject s bar will graphically show the difference in times with two different colors Note As currently implemented when blue goes to freeze soundObjects it may appear to be frozen but messages will continue to appear in the console showing that csound is rendering the frozen soundObjects Future versions will be more polished How SoundObject Freezing Works 1 An soundObject is selected 2 Using the same project settings all of the instruments tables global orc sco etc but not scoreTimeline generated sco blue generates the sco for the selected soundObject and produce a temporary csd file 51 Getting Started Notes W blue runs csound with csound Wdo freezex wav tempfile csd where the x in freezex wav is an integer counting up This wav file is generated in the same directory that the projectFile is located blue replaces the soundObject in the timeline
195. tput channels as well as sends for each channel If not does not generate output for Send If channel does not have channel output and no valid prefader sends do not generate anything for channel f SubChannel has no signal inputs whether it s from another Channel s out channel a Send or dependency from code that uses the subChannel form of blueMixerOut do not generate anything for channel 37 Getting Started Blue Live eoo blue 2 2 1 beta alphaV2 test blue P Start Render From 0 0 To 8 166667 Play Time v Loop 41 I gt 41 b WI blueLive Recompile All Notes Off MIDI Input LJ EU Tables GlobalOrchestra GlobalScore Proje EEEN 51 s 6 Space SCO Pad Options Start Time Tempo 120 Repeat Trigger Subjective Duration End Time Add New External Time Behavior Add New GenericScore Use Repeat Point Repeat Point Add New ObjectBuilder Color Add New PatternObject Add New PythonObject es Add New RhinoObject Remove Row Add New TrackerObject 019 Insert Column Before Insert Column After SoundObject not selected or does not support note pr Remove Column tor Output Blue Live Blue Live allows you to work with Csound in realtime It allows for generating score with SoundObjects and working with MIDI keyboard input to create notes and run with Csound instruments defined in your project Note Blue Live works when using the Csound API
196. trings Note Template The default note template when inserting notes Notes make a copy of this template string when created and edits to the note s string stay with the note Generally you ll want to create a template string that will match the instrument this PianoRoll will be used with Scale The scale used with this PianoRoll The PianoRoll defaults to a 12 TET scale the standard scale in use in Western classical and popular music Pressing the button labeled will open a file browser for selecting Scala scales to use in place of the default After selecting a scale the PianoRoll will adjust the note canvas for the number of scale degrees the newly selected scale contains 88 Reference Base Frequency The base frequency of the scale for octave 8 and scale degree 0 8 00 Defaults to C below A440 Pch Generation Selects how the notes will generate their value to be used when replacing the lt FREQ gt tag value in a note template The options are Frequency The value of the note s pitch expressed in terms of frequency in hertz This value is calculated using the chosen Scale for the PianoRoll blue PCH Value of note expressed in blue PCH a format similar to Csound PCH but differs in that it does not allow fractional values Values are generated as octave scaleDegree i e 8 22 would be octave 8 and scale degree 22 in a scale that has 23 or more notes or would wrap around as it does in Csound PCH If the scale ha
197. tting Started The Sound Font Viewer allows you to select SoundFonts from the file selection panel on the left and get a listing of the instruments and presets within that SoundFont To use navigate using the file selection panel and double click on a SoundFont After processing is complete the tables on the right side will be populated with a listing of instruments and presets held within that SoundFont FTable Converter FTable Converter initpos damping init velocity trajectory Convert ta Oo initpos ftgen 0 ftgen 0 128 FTable Converter The FTable Converter tool converts ftable statements into ftgen statements When converted the prior ftable statement numbers are ignored and ftgen statements are created using requested ftable number of 49 Getting Started 0 The generated ftgen statements generate with the values of the ftables set to gi_ with the expectation that the user will fill out the rest of the name to be meaningful to them Conversion of ftable statements to ftgen statements is useful in creating ftables that will be referenced by global variables instead of hard coded numbers To use simply put your ftable statement text in the top text area and press the Convert to button to convert For example if you use the following ftable statement text 10 128 7 0 128 O initpos f2 0 128 7 1128 1 masses 0 128 7 0 128 2 centering force
198. ty Realtime Render Disk Render Freeze Flags Program Options Utility Utility Csound Executable This is the command for what version of Csound to execute when blue uses utilities that depend on Csound for example freezing SoundObjects the SoundFont Viewer utility The default value of csound works if you have a version of Csound in your path named csound You may use any command here that would call Csound that would work as if you were running csound from a terminal Getting Started Note The value defined for Csound Executable should only be the command to call Csound and no other flags should be added here Freeze Flags These are the flags for Csound that blue uses when performing SoundObject freezing Defaults are Ado for Mac and Wdo for all other operating systems Users may wish to modify this value if they would their frozen soundObjects to be in a different format i e 32 bit float soundfiles Realtime Render F 77777777 7 T Program Options WB BB A General Project Defaults Text Colors Playback Utility Realtime Render Disk Render Project Settings sr ksmps nchnls Devices M Audio Driver AISA vi Audio Out dac hw 0 0 EA m J MIDI Driver PortMIDI J MIDI In ltl Buffer Settings v Software Buffer b 256 lex Message Level vj Note Amplitudes v Out of Range Messages vj Warnings vj Benchmark Information Adva
199. u up to date Note While checkins to CVS are almost always done in such a way that the program is in a state which it will compile and function cleanly it sometimes does happen that a broken checkin occurs Users building from CVS should be careful to depend on using only a version from CVS if they are not able to fix code to make things compile If you are not able to fix Java code then it is recommended to keep two copies of builds from CVS one which to use for your general use and another for using to test if things will build 150
200. u work with Python more for score generation you ll probably either create a slew of text handling classes that use lots of regular expressions or a more object based system that interacts amongst itself before generating score text output I hope to address these types of design decisions in the near future in another tutorial which will hopefully help those new to scripting and programming learn how to go about analyzing music goals in terms of programming and then designing and implementing their solutions Usage Ideas Using the external SoundObject and the Python SoundObject besides their general usefulness of allowing scripting in blue may be considered alternative methods of extending blue through script rather than compiling Java programs The extensibility of the system is very open ended as whatever is available to Python and other languages now becomes accesible to blue as well as using score generating programs that are able to print to stdout So if you wanted to write a perl script that hits weather websites on the internet gathers data from them and then maps that data to different parameters of a note generating algorithm you could build that outside of blue but then have the added benefit of being able to use that within blue If you build a C program to generate scores you re able to call it from within blue Maybe even something simple like doing a text include of a text file could be done rather easily with a few lines
201. ueLive or from a SoundObject Layer Also you can switch to a different type of SoundObject using the menu SoundObjects will generate accordingly to the values set in the SoundObject Properties dialog with the exception of the start time Blue will reassign the start time to 0 when it generates the notes for the layer On the whole this behavior will not affect most users but is worth noting To edit the SoundObject for a Pattern Layer you can either use the popup menu option for Edit SoundObject or you can also click the layer panel on the left A single click will bring up the SoundObject editor 19 Getting Started To edit the layer s patterns click on a grid box to toggle between on and off for that box You can also press down and drag along to set multiple boxes The value that is set for the multiple boxes will depend on the action of the first box selected For example if the first box when the initial mouse down is on the mouse down will turn it off and dragging will turn off all boxes that the mouse extends through User Interface Walkthrough Play Bar The play bar at the top has time to start playing from what time to play to if the render end time is set the current play time Loop checkbox to have render looping from render start time to render end time Forward Back buttons for jumping between markers Back button to start from beginning of Score Play Stop buttons to start stop rendering
202. und Table 3 11 Editing GenericScore PythonObject RhinoObject Shortcuts Description ctrl T when the text area is focused ctrl T runs test on the soundObject same as pressing the test button 118 Appendix A Introduction to Csound Currently this section is not yet written For more information on Csound please read Dr Richard Boulanger s wonderful TOOTS for Csound available at here http csounds com toots 119 Appendix B Breaks in Backwards Compatibility This section logs any breaks in backwards compatibility Table B 1 Compatibility Breaks Version Description 0 124 3 Previously if a BSBObject was set to have Automation Allowed but was not itself automated it would compile as a constant in the generated CSD As of 0 124 3 if a widget is made to allow automation the Csound code that uses the widget value must accept a k rate signal whether the API is used or not If you have a project that rendered fine before 0 124 3 but afterwards can not render due to problems with Csound complaining that k rate signals not allowed then you will need to either set the problematic widgets to not allow automation or change the Csound code so that it will work with the generated k rate signal 120 Appendix C Glossary Glossary B blue directory blue Home blue PCH 121 Part Il Tutorials Tutorials Your First Project A
203. undObject and picking Convert to Generic Score from the popup menu which automatically takes the the instrument from the soundObject and adds it to the orchestra under the orchestra manager and also leaves me with a single three p field note which also shows me what instrument number the instrument was assigned After that I ll go to the orchestra manager and edit the instrument to now take in more p fields changing the top text to something like ipch cpspch p4 iamp ampdb p5 ispace p6 I usually find myself making two or three different sounds then copying a bunch of them and changing a few parameters to try out things in time then converting them into instruments It s a nice separation to have the ability to work just with sounds at the start of a piece for me as really that s what I m concerned with at the beginning of a piece finding the sounds and initially sculpting the sound space that the piece will take on After I find what I m looking for it s easy for me to convert all the sounds into instruments and then proceed from there Sound Design Sometimes when you re wanting to just to build a single sound or texture maybe to use as a sound effect in project you might not really be thinking in terms of scores notes and instruments but rather in terms of sounds in time In situations like this the Sound SoundObject would be the first thing I would use and might really be the only soundObject I would use Notes as a co
204. undObject library where the default for creating instances of SoundObjects is to have Time Behavior of Scale on the Instance SoundObject When the PatternObject is used with a Scale time behavior you may not get the results you think you will get if the pattern is not filled in in the last subdivision of the beat When blue goes to generate a score for a soundObject with a scale time behavior the score is first generated then scaled to the duration of the soundObject So if you re pattern has empty subdivisions and you re expecting there to be a space at the end of your pattern when you go to generate the CSD the space won t be there To get around this you may want to use a time behavior of None or you may want put in a ghost note in a Pattern layer using a note like i 10000 0 25 Where 10000 is not an instrument in use in your project Then you can put in a trigger for this pattern in the last subdivision What will happen is that blue will process the score with this note s time and thus will generate with this out to the CSD but Csound will ignore the note When the PatternObject is set to use a time behavior of Repeat the same situation can occur as when using Scale if a Repeat Point is not set as the default for Repeat when no repeat point is set is to take the generated score and repeat it after the duration of the last note To prevent this either use the ghost note technique above or set a repeat point 86 Refere
205. undObjects on the Score Timeline the marquee that is drawn to show the selection area will paint with an alpha transparent white background May slow down performance when enabled If this is enabled output from rendering with Csound will be shown in the Csound Output Dialog accessible from the Window menu or available with the F7 shortcut If disabled output will be shown in the std out of the console that opens when blue starts If the blue starter script has been modified not to show the console by using javaw instead of java then the output will not be able to be seen It is recommended to enable this option Since Csound5 the default for printed messages is to show them with colors by using ANSI text modifiers However this only works within ANSI compliant consoles and does not work within blue s Csound Output Dialog It is recommended to keep this disabled if the Show Csound Output option is enabled Which language to use for blue This affects the labels of the User Interface messages given to the user in dialog boxes menu titles etc Translation files may not always be up to of date so some UI items may not be translated when not in English Getting Started Project Defaults 1222222222222 Program Options WM BB B EI General Project Defaults Text Colors Playback Utility Realtime Render Disk Render Author Mixer Enabled OK Cancel These settings are used whenever new projects
206. urrent project s directory Includes path separator at end Process at Start There is a checkbox entitled Process at Start Selecting this option will have the script of the PythonObject run when a blue project is loaded This is useful for scripts that act as library functions but themselves do not generate any notes For example you might define a number of score generation utility functions in one PythonObject that has Process at Start enabled Your other PythonObjects may then use 91 Reference the functions from that PythonObject Next time you load your project if that PythonObject hasn t been run your other PythonObjects will not be able to be run either If you are rendering from the beginning of a project this won t be an issue but if you re starting work in the middle of a project you will need to evaluate that utility PythonObject at least once You can either do a run from the start at least once use the Test button to have that evaluated or use Process at Start and have blue ensure it is loaded into the python interpreter when you load your projects RhinoObject Accepts NoteProcessors yes Allows for the use of the JavaScript programming language to create score data uses the Rhino interpreter to interpret JavaScript scripts After writing your script to generate notes you ll have to bring back into blue by assigning the variable score the text string of the generated javaScript score Example
207. will be in blue app Contents Resources blue etc blue conf Default sr to use for realtime settings in new projects Default ksmps to use for realtime settings in new projects Default value to use for Odbfs Also the checkbox denotes whether projects should use Odbfs by default or not Driver to use for audio input and output This is equivalent to using the rtaudio flag setting on the commandline Enabling the checkbox determines if this value will be used at all when rendering and if so will use the value from the dropdown as the driver setting Audio output device to use Equivalent to using o flag setting on the commandline This setting is dependent on the setting used on the audio driver setting Using a value of dac will use the default device for the driver The value of this setting will be used for all projects that set Audio Out enabled in the project level realtime render settings By selecting the button to the right of this field blue will try to detect what devices are available for the chosen Audio Driver If blue is able to find the devices a popup dialog will appear with a list of available devices Selecting from the popup will then populate the textfield with the correct device string that Csound will use to choose the device requested 11 Getting Started Audio In MIDI Driver MIDI Out Note If the driver is chosen but not enabled for use via its checkbox when auto detecting
208. with a FrozenSoundObject The FrozenSoundObject keeps a copy of the original soundObject for unfreezing as well as shows the name of the frozen wav file the original soundObject s duration and the frozen wav file s duration not necessarily the same as is the case if using global reverb for example When you do a render of the entire piece now the frozen sound object generates a very simple wav playing csound instrument that will play the rendered wav file as is The instrument looks something like aoutl aout2 diskin p4 outs aoutl aout2 and the FrozenSoundObject only generates a single note that has the start time the duration of the frozen wav file and the name of the file This will end up playing the soundFile exactly as if the SCO for the original soundObject was generated This also bypasses any routing to global sound processing as if you had any of these effects originally the would be generated as part of the frozen file You can select multiple soundObjects and batch freeze and unfreeze the generated wav file may be longer than the original soundObject due to global processing instruments like reverb echo etc This is taken into account The freezing system does not work for all graph toplogies If you re using soundObjects with instruments used as control signals this won t work unless the notes for the instruments they are controlling are alsoin the same soundObject Le I have one soundObject that has only n
209. y excel in the design of instruments and expressing the connections between modules I have found that this sort of hybrid design offers the best of both worlds and when I am spending time building and using new instruments I can quickly design an instrument and also explore the parameters of an instrument s design by using blueSynthBuilder Using BlueSynthBuilder BlueSynthBuilder is divided up into two tabs each of which handles the different concerns of the instrument builder Also the process of creating instruments and using instruments is also split between 111 Reference edit and usage modes Instrument builders will tend to use both modes while users of BSB instruments may not ever have to touch a line of Csound instrument code or have to modify the instrument s UI at all though that liberty to do so is there Interface Editor The Interface editor has two modes Edit Mode Instrument Editor Comments Blue Synth Builder Interface Code Add Knob Add Horizontal Slider Add Vertical Slider Add Label The user can add interface elements and modify their properties using the property sheet on the right To enable edit mode click on the Edit Enabled checkbox in the upper right of the BSB instrument editor Once the edit mode is enabled right clicking in the main panel will show a popup menu of available UI widgets for your instrument After selecting and inserting a widget clicking on the widget will

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