Lambda the Ultimate

Suitability of APL2 for Music
started 6/9/2001; 7:51:06 AM - last post 6/11/2001; 7:37:15 AM

Chris Rathman - Suitability of APL2 for Music

6/9/2001; 7:51:06 AM (reads: 1499, responses: 1)

Suitability of APL2 for Music

The above article is an interesting look at the notational conciseness of APL and the correlation that has to musical notation. For those not into APL, there's a plethora of other choices available - see Programming Languages Used for Music.

Since one of our contributing editors is on the mend from programming languages, I thought it appropriate to discuss the relationship between programming languages and music languages. As for myself, I've been slowly trying to learn the acoustic finger slicer but I'm no where near good enuf for it to encroach on my hobby in programming languages. :-)
Posted to fun by Chris Rathman on 6/9/01; 7:56:02 AM

John Lawter - Re: Suitability of APL2 for Music

6/11/2001; 7:37:15 AM (reads: 660, responses: 0)

This is a pretty interesting article. But, I'm not sure how much of an advantage there is in correlating to musical notation, as more modern composers (e.g. Cage, Xenakis) were moving away from traditional music notation systems.

Most of the people I know are using Max-type languages (Max/MSP, JMax, Pd) rather than non-graphical languages like CSound (APL2 falls in this category). Of course, the people I know are working in real-time, so Max's "process-oriented" view might be more suitable.

I really wonder how many people are still using text-oriented music languages. I know CSound is still popular, but that may have more to do with its "legacy" nature. I've seen Hudak's Haskore and MacCartney's Supercollider, but I'm not sure that they have the same level (depth ?) of penetration into the mindshare of composers.