Clojurians Log v2

Can I use alda to name a group of notes, and just use the name in various places around the score? Like a macro or a function definition, perhaps?

hi @yjmbo -- good timing, i actually just came here to post a link 😛

we are actually working on variables, which should be coming to alda very soon

:simple_smile: I'm giving a short talk on alda at the upcoming LCA2016 music miniconf, so I'm trying it out

oh wow, that's awesome!

please feel free to tap me here or via email if you have any questions about anything, i'll be happy to help

Yep, that's why I joined the channel. At the moment alda doesn't seem very much like a programming music; I'm trying to find ways to reduce the amount of 'code' that needs to be written.

i saw a lot of comments like that a while back on a thread about alda on hackernews

i definitely intend for alda to be used more "programmatically" like that in the future

At least nested repeats seems to work, that's nice

we're sort of working our way there, from a starting foundation of a simple markup-like language

i think variables will open up a whole world of possibilities

see the examples on the first post here: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/131

yep, that's the sort of notation that would work. Also perhape including external files?

s/perhape/perhaps/

https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/133 :simple_smile:

Mmm, perhaps I should spend more time reading the github issues list then :simple_smile:

OK, a question outside my scope, as I don't play with MIDI; how can I get a decent set of instruments for the playback? The ones my system currently supply are a bit insipid ... and I'm using Ace of Spades as my demo, which doesn't work well with 'insipid' :simple_smile:

lol, i bet it sounds pretty crappy with the default JVM soundfont

recognisable though :simple_smile:

i would definitely recommend installing a nice, open source MIDI soundfont

Specially having issues with trying to predict what percussion would be like

we actually have a script for that in the alda repo -- see: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda#installation

FluidR3 is a nice open source soundfont -- cloning the alda repo and running scripts/install-fluidr3 will make it the default MIDI soundfont for your JVM

percussion support is high on my TODO list. i'm hoping to get at least basic support for it knocked out by the time i give my alda talk at the ClojureRemote conference on february 11

-> http://clojureremote.com/speakers/#yarwood

(i've got to run, heading home for the day -- will be back on later though)

Thanks Dave, I'll make sure to get some of those links/references into the talk. It's only 20 mins though! http://www.annodex.org/events/lca2016_mmm/index.php/Main/Schedule