Re: [iiwusynth-devel] hello, thanks, and stuff

[Josh Green]

On Thu, 2002-05-09 at 19:25, Tim Goetze wrote:
> 
> only too happy to oblige, i hope i can make it short, but i fear i
> can't ;)
> 
> it's my private quest for a near-perfect environment for musical 
> work, for which i need hard disk recording, DSP, and full-duplex 
> audio as well as recording, sequencing and transforming midi. 
> 
> all objects (aka plugins) needed for this work together in one 
> flowchart (i call it a graph), and can connect in any number of 
> ways -- well you cannot feed an audio input from a midi output, 
> but if you stick one of these lovely IIWU plugins inbetween, you 
> can. ;)
> 
> an important point, and the main reason for rolling my own in the
> first place, is that all of the objects above interface with python, 
> and that it is possible (though at the price of a delay on the order 
> of a millisecond or three on this box) to use python for coding 
> plugins as long as they don't do audio.
> 
> in fact, the application itself and most of the windowing will be 
> coded in python, while all the lowlevel code sits in a python 
> extension.
> 
> the graph and all of the audio and midi plugins i need are up and 
> running in sync by now (with the exception of a ladspa plugin, but 
> i already have code from an earlier go). apart from minor things, 
> the only crucial functions still missing in the extension / library 
> layer are seamless loops and better transport control than start /
> stop only. 
> 
> i read about your iiwu_rt project with great interest, and i can
> tell you that making python work well in such a multithreaded,
> realtime environment is really, really hard. if python was written 
> with the ideas you have in mind my coding life would be a lot less 
> complicated. but thank god it's looking like i'll soon be able to 
> turn to the simple pleasures of writing the 'real application' in
> python, and the delights of coding graphics without at almost any 
> statement first thinking 'is it safe to do this?' but rather 'does 
> it look good?'
> 
> there you have it, i couldn't make it short, just as i thought ...
> 

Sounds like a rather ambitious project :) I've been wanting a real time
MIDI composition environment in Linux for quite sometime now, is this a
goal you are shooting for with your application? I've been entertaining
ideas of making one myself, but I'm starting to feel like I'll never get
around to it. If you are already doing something like what I have been
wanting, it would be much easier to help out then to start something new
;) Have you thought of a name yet? I was thinking of calling my project
Dream Sequence, although I wouldn't mind if this name was used for your
own. Although it sounds like what you are doing is more than just a
sequencer. Lates.
        Josh Green