Pre-Conj Interview: Steven Yi

October 27, 2014

Introduction

Steven Yi is next up on the interviews. He will talk at Clojure/conj about music systems in Clojure. Read the background to his talk.

Interview

LispCast: How did you get into Clojure?

Steven Yi: I think I came across it online about two years ago when it started to get a bit of a buzz. I had long wanted to learn a Lisp, but Common Lisp and Scheme never really clicked when I tried. Clojure was different though, and since I do a fair amount of Java programming, the possibility to integrate Clojure with my JVM music software Blue helped motivate me to get into it.

LC: Can you briefly describe Blue, Pink, and Score?

SY: Blue is a music composition environment, written in Java using the Netbeans RCP. It is a graphical environment with a score timeline, graphical instruments, mixer and effects, and more. It uses Csound as its audio engine and signal processing system. (Disclosure: I'm also one of the core developers of Csound.)

Pink is a Clojure library for building music systems. It features a low-level audio engine, higher-order events, and includes signal generation and processing functions.

Score is a Clojure library for higher-level music work, particularly for generating notes and scores using various strategies. It is designed to be generic and usable with multiple backends. Using Score and Pink together can be particularly effective and expressive, having one language for the full musical stack.

LC: Overtone has been getting a lot of attention lately. How do Pink and Score compare to Overtone?

SY:Ah yes, certainly the elephant in the room. :) I'll certainly address comparisons to Overtone in more detail during the talk. In a nutshell, Overtone builds upon SuperCollider. Of those two, Pink would compare more to SuperCollider than to Overtone, as it is concerned with low-level audio engine design. Score deals with higher-level abstractions in music, many of which are covered in Overtone. However, because of the full-stack Clojure design between Pink and Score, Score can interact with Pink in ways Overtone/SuperCollider can not. Pink/Score are currently not as mature nor as performant as Overtone/SuperCollider. There's a lot of overlaps between the various systems, and use cases and requirements for a user's project will guide them to one system or the other.

Hopefully that's enough to get going! I think the breakdown of music systems design I'm planning for the talk should hopefully make things clear.

LC: Is there any resource that could help someone new to Clojure, or new to music systems, get the most out of your talk?

SY: think it's a tough question about music systems as I don't know of any resources out there that really introduce the subject. Having some experience with Overtone would certainly be useful. I can say I'll probably mention SuperCollider, Csound, Common Lisp Music, Nyquist, and Common Music during the talk:

and perhaps Incudine and OpusModus:

But that's a long list. :P

Actually, the Wikipedia link to Music-N would probably be a good place to get going.

LC: Where can people follow you on your adventures?

SY:

LC: Thanks, Steven, for a great interview! It was a pleasure.

SY: And thank you too!

This post is one of a series called Pre-conj Prep, which originally was published by email. It's all about getting ready for the upcoming Clojure/conj, organized by Cognitect. Conferences are ongoing conversations and explorations. Speakers discuss trends, best practices, and the future by drawing on the rich context built up in past conferences and other media.

That rich context is what Pre-conj Prep is about. I want to enhance everyone's experience at the conj by surfacing that context. With just a little homework, we can be better prepared to understand and enjoy the talks and the hallway conversations, as well as the beautiful venue and city of Washington, DC.

Clojure/conj is a conference organized and hosted by Cognitect. This information is in no way official. It is not sponsored by nor affiliated with Clojure/conj or Cognitect. It is simply me curating and organizing public information about the conference.