SuperCollider programming language

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For the particle accelerator, see Superconducting Supercollider.

SuperCollider The name SuperCollider is said to have its origin from the Superconducting Super Collider in Waxahachie, Texas, which was planned, but never built. is an environment and programming language for real time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. Originating as proprietary software, it was released in 2002 by its author, James McCartney, under the free software GPL license. Since then it has been evolving into a system used and further developed by both scientists and artists working with sound. It is an efficient and expressive dynamic programming language which makes it an interesting framework for acoustic research, algorithmic music and interactive programming.

Contents

1 Architecture
2 Language Features
3 Synthesis Server Features
4 Code examples
5 System requirements
6 References
7 External links

Architecture

Since version 3 the SuperCollider environment is split into a server, scsynth, and a client, sclang, that communicate using OpenSound Control.

SC Language combines the object oriented structure of Smalltalk and features from functional programming languages with a C programming language family syntax.

The SC Server application supports a simple C plugin API making it easy to write efficient sound algorithms (unit generators) which can then be combined into graphs of calculations. Due to the fact that all external control in the server happens via open sound control, it is possible to access its functionality from other languages or applications. One example for such a system is [rsc], a Scheme implementation for accessing scserver.

Language Features

Constant time message lookup
Real time garbage collection
Lexical closure
Functions as first class objects, function composition
Coroutines
Default argument values, variable length argument lists and any order keyword arguments
Both lexical and dynamic scope
Closure creation via partial application (i.e., explicit currying / schönfinkelling)
Tail call optimization
List comprehensions
allows to represent properties such as time and pitch in variable degrees of abstraction

Synthesis Server Features

open sound control access
simple ANSI C plugin API
supports any number of input and output channels
gives access to an ordered tree structure of synthesis nodes which define the order of execution
bus system which allows to dynamically restructure the signal flow
buffers for writing and reading
calculation at different rates depending on the needs: audio rate, control rate, demand rate

Code examples



// play a mixture of pink noise and an 800 Hz sine tone
.play; 


// modulate the sine frequency and the noise amplitude with another sine
// whose frequency depends on the horizontal cursor position
.play; 


// list iteration: create a collection of indices multiplied by their values
[1, 2, 5, 10, -3].collect 


// factorial function
f =   }

System requirements

SC runs under GNU/Linux and Mac OS X. There is also a port of the audio synthesis server available for Microsoft Windows. The GNU/Linux version can easily be controlled from GNU Emacs.

References

External links

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