Re: Computer Music in Squeak

On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> 
> We have an annual 'Hands-On Science' week in the summer holiday,
> when high-school pupils from around the country come and try things.
> There are 'projects' where we have them for 3 or 4 mornings and 'snacks'
> where we have them for a couple of hours.
> I received an unexpected request to run another one this coming summer
> (it's winter here now).  It suddently occurred to me that a computer
> music project using Squeak should be really fun, but I've never done
> anything like that.
> 
> Any suggestions would be MOST welcome.   It may not come off, but if it
> does it should be quite enjoyable for the students.  We'd probably have
> a lab of OS/X macintoshes, if it makes any difference.

What I really like is visualizing sounds. Starting with a MIDI file you
can play animations for each note. To exactly match the animation to the
sound you have to give the animation a little bit of lead time. For
example, a hammer hitting a string needs to start moving a few
milliseconds before the actual note is played.

The best implementation of this idea I've ever seen comes from Animusic.
There is a very nice collection of pieces performed on "virtual
instruments" available on DVD at animusic.com. An MPEG (37 MB) of one of 
those pieces is here (from this year's ATI demos at SIGGRAPH):  
http://mirror2.ati.com/misc/demos/ATI-9700-animusic-Demo-v1.0.mpg

I'd *love* to have this in Squeak (even if it's not 3D) :^)

-- Bert