I'm curious what you did with it? I spent a little time with ChucK with the Oxford Laptop Orchestra (as was) which was an offshoot from the Princeton one. I was there as a technologist, not a musician. Always had a soft spot but never found myself using it again.
I've watched a couple of her stuff, it's really inspiring and feels very cosy, like a slice of Internet that lives on its own and creates without being too bothered about the Algorithm™.
In order, the most popular ones of these are probably
* Max. It's built into a popular DAW, and is shockingly capable as an actual programming language too. The entire editor for the Haken line of products is written in Max.
* Pure Data or Supercollider.
* Csound.
Not ordering things like Scala or LilyPond that are much more domain-specific.
I really hope that Max becomes fully accessible in a text based format one day. It's so cool and I've spent a few months randomly through the years building neat plugins for Ableton but, for me, it would be so much stickier if it was code. Especially now with AI assistance, Claude can still be helpful but it hallucinates a lot harder when trying to describe visual code.
you can get the LLM to output max patches in JSON and copy paste directly into max. it was pretty decent at it when I tried and would probably be even better with relevant recent documentation in context.
Most of the languages on the list have not been maintained in decades with many being for functionally extinct if not completely extinct systems. It is not really a list meant to guide you to a language to use, it is more about historical/academic interest.
Relevant to this discussion - my project Glicol (https://glicol.org) addresses this space. Currently working on a no_std rewrite, demo coming next year :)
Yesterday i used Claude Code to define and implement a YAML based DSL for playing backing tracks. I can ask an LLM to generate this DSL for any well known song, and it will include chord progression, lyrics, bass, drums, strumming pattern, etc. It's a go command line tool that plays the DSL via midi, and displays the chords, strumming patterns, and lyrics. Also does export to Strudel.
Depending on the source music, there are many aspects of this that normally require a license with a records company or some proxy. Especially the lyrics part. Be careful not to get into very expensive trouble. Just because the LLM can do it, doesn’t mean it’s ok to do it.
Yes, I noticed that Claude Code silently refused to generate lyrics for some songs i requested. Benefit of this approach is that anybody can quickly generate a YAML file for a backing track, no need to share it anywhere.
I think the problem is that the artist doesn't get anything with this approach. If you really want to use someone else's music/artworks/lyrics, just buy it.
It's not like this is very unique, YouTube has tons of training and backing track videos, which is what i typically use. And artist don't sell it in a way that can be consumed for guitar practice easily.
The problem I see is: people are not going to use a project that is AI generated for long really, unless they do it just for a one-off task. I'd like to constantly generate new music. I also have ideas based on existing music so I want to adjust this, but do so programmatically, and that seems ... hard.
I kind of want to create music programmatically but
so far it has been way too difficult. I also can
barely find anything useful via oldschool google
search anymore. I am almost stuck like with MIDI
here ...
Sonic Pi is SuperCollider, but using Ruby instead of the default sclang language. Overtone is similar (and possibly originally by the same developer, iirc?) but using Clojure, and is also missing from the list.
Musicabc has some really nice JS and Obsidian plugins that essentially allow you to create little scrapbooks of musical ideas in markdown that are also playable as sound and viewable as sheet music.
Csound (I think v3) was the first music language I played with, back in the early 90s, under DOS even. Back then, running in real-time wasn't a thing. Generate a WAV file and play it after the program finished.
Later, at the end of the 90s, I remember playing with CLM/CM, in common lisp.
But the most productive experience was definitely SuperCollider. I can only recommend giving it a try. Its real-time sound synthesis architecture is great. Basically works sending timestamped OSC messages AOT (usually 0.2s). It also has a very interesting way of building up so-called SynthDefs from code into a DAG. I always wondered if a modern rewrite of the same architecture using JIT/AOT technology would be useful. But I digress... SC3 is a great platform to play with sound synthesis... Give it a try if you find the time.
I can vouch for the tutorial series from Eli Fieldsteel[0] for getting into SuperCollider and audio synthesis in general. If you were ever curious on how to bridge the gap between signal processing and music theory through mathematical operations, I think this is one of the best series out there.
There is also literate programming for music, right? Just like Donald Knuth describes it in his literate programming approach? See for example the videos by Fauci etc. They say things like eh eh, pause then play music using items such as a pen, there is even a conductor. Very entertaining. Is that true? Or just my imagination?
https://youtu.be/aPsq5nqvhxg
I feel like that’s kinda how people imagined navigating whatever cyber domain when the first big cyberpunk novels came out
* Max. It's built into a popular DAW, and is shockingly capable as an actual programming language too. The entire editor for the Haken line of products is written in Max.
* Pure Data or Supercollider.
* Csound.
Not ordering things like Scala or LilyPond that are much more domain-specific.
Here's a currently active list on github in case somebody's left needing a fix of music programming: https://github.com/zoejane/awesome-music-programming
If it’s the same, it’s one that if I win the lottery I’d spend my time learning along with this tool from Imogen https://mimugloves.com/
I don’t think I’d ever produce something worth listening to, but if I won the lottery, why would I care beyond my own enjoyment?
Or maybe it is already possible, to be fair I haven't looked closely.
https://daisy.audio/hardware/, https://github.com/electro-smith/libDaisy
One interesting feature is it has built-in vibe coding, to produce an LLM-generated loop program to start one's creative journey.
The handbook for the language is sadly only in Danish so it might not be super interesting: https://datamuseum.dk/bits/30002486
Here is the code for movement 1 and 2 of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik: https://datamuseum.dk/aa/gier/30000644.html
BTW. I've played with LLM in sound design tasks recently. Vibe coded MCP server for Waldorf Blofeld gave me good results. Sorry, no demo.
http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SoundAndSonifica...
https://abc.hieuthi.com/
But the most productive experience was definitely SuperCollider. I can only recommend giving it a try. Its real-time sound synthesis architecture is great. Basically works sending timestamped OSC messages AOT (usually 0.2s). It also has a very interesting way of building up so-called SynthDefs from code into a DAG. I always wondered if a modern rewrite of the same architecture using JIT/AOT technology would be useful. But I digress... SC3 is a great platform to play with sound synthesis... Give it a try if you find the time.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzsOOiJ_p4&list=PLPYzvS8A_r...
https://youtu.be/XYe8AKYPUYc?si=ZYP4QM5FLn00-5u6