At the intersection of music production and coding

[jellyjim]

Hello

What skills are out there at the intersection of music production and coding and are they actually in demand?

I'm less interested in straightforward software development (DSP, plug-ins, apps, firmware etc) as that's more about creating musical tools rather than leveraging code for specific productions, performances or content; though I appreciate this distinction could easily get blurred.

Here's what I can think of

* FMOD and WWise (game audio middleware packages)
* Max/MSP, particularly in its implementation within Ableton Live, Max for Live
* Pure Data (very niche afaik, don't know of any commercial applications)
* SuperCollider (very niche afaik, don't know of any commercial applications)
* Native Instruments' KSP (Kontakt's scripting language)

Thoughts?

Jim

[The Elf]

Don't know about commercial value, but learning KSP has made me self-sufficient in creating my own MPE/Poly AT instruments, and that alone was worth the effort of becoming familiar with it.

The problem with any programming language is that unless you are working with it on an almost dailiy basis there's a degree of re-learning each time you come back to it.

[jellyjim]

Don't know about commercial value, but learning KSP has made me self-sufficient in creating my own MPE/Poly AT instruments, and that alone was worth the effort of becoming familiar with it.

That's very cool. Good effort that man!

The problem with any programming language is that unless you are working with it on an almost dailiy basis there's a degree of re-learning each time you come back to it.

Welcome to my day job!

[The Elf]

Welcome to my day job!

Yes, it used to be mine too! COBOL, CICS and DB2 doesn't really set you up for OO languages, though. C still baffles me totally!

[jellyjim]

Welcome to my day job!

Yes, it used to be mine too! COBOL, CICS and DB2 doesn't really set you up for OO languages, though. C still baffles me totally!

COBOL! That's old school, in a cool way, like a dusty Neve or SSL desk. C is a little obtuse for sure.

It's all web related stuff for me these days, that's where the $ is, but I've done so many different things over the years I can turn my hand to most fairly quick.

The re-training aspect has gone into overdrive particularly with anything at the front-end like JavaScript. There's a new hip framework every five minutes. People hardly even bother to keep up anymore. You just learn on the job.

Can you do ... YES. Do you know anything about ... YES. Have you tried ... YES. Ok you're hired.

[James Perrett]

I did part of a postgraduate OU computing course where they used both Pascal and Smalltalk. Pascal teaches you to be fairly disciplined but Smalltalk takes OO to the extreme. For work I started on HP Basic and Fortran then moved to working almost exclusively in C and C++ with a bit of Matlab thrown in.

I don't do much coding nowadays but I've done the odd MIDI thing in C++ and I've now been exposed to Python, Javascript and Scratch through our son's newly discovered interest in computers.

Python also looks useful for coding Reaper extensions though I've not needed to get into that yet.

[jellyjim]

Python also looks useful for coding Reaper extensions though I've not needed to get into that yet.

Yes, Python! Good shout. Lots of applications with that. Didn't know Reaper was using it.

There's 'Processing' too which is the Arduino's programming language (on the surface at least, but C underneath). Arduino not always but often for music stuff

[Martin Walker]

The problem with any programming language is that unless you are working with it on an almost daily basis there's a degree of re-learning each time you come back to it.

Agreed. Last year I had the chance to revisit my 6502 Assembly Language coding skills while adding features to my C64 Music driver and editor written back in the 80's, and it was refreshingly different and strangely rewarding (even when I had to resort to cycle-counting to optimise new routines).

However, I do find the same re-learning thing happens with some of the more advanced audio plug-ins - you buy them and initially spend some hours getting to grips with how all their various parameters interact, then a month or two later when you remember you've got that plug-in and load it up you're back to relying on its presets again

Martin

[The Elf]

When I was setting up my RetroPie at Christmas I found my old C64 development disk and saw some of the 6502 code I'd written. I could just about understand my assembler code, but what it was doing was a bit mind-boggling! The interrupt-driven audio player I wrote was quite a sophisticated piece of code - I used to be clever back then until the witch's spell wore off!

[jellyjim]

saw some of the 6502 code I'd written ... I used to be clever back then until the witch's spell wore off!

ELECTRICKERY!

[jellyjim]

I'm very impressed you both did some assembler. I had a go at Z80 stuff on my ZX81 and Spectrum and later Motorola 68000 on my Atari ST but I was a bit young (stupid) and no Internet to speak of in those days. You had the one or two books you could afford and some magazine articles if you were lucky!

[CS70]

It's all web related stuff for me these days, that's where the $ is, but I've done so many different things over the years I can turn my hand to most fairly quick.

A bit OT, but you would be surprised where the money is..

Yes there's lots of web work but there's loads of people who can do it and that's mostly youngsters who are not so well paid - that is, paid way more than youngsters in most other jobs, of course - but still far from top money. You can make a good living, sure, but money is in the niches: either more complex stuff like C or C++, in which not everybody is willing to put the time it takes; the or seriously boring stuff - like SAP or various ERP and application specific packages which most people don't want to do because there's a distinct chance it leads to intellectual sucide. About 10/15 years ago I could have taken contracts a 100K pounds a quarter in London, using Tibco, simply because the amount of people familiar with the platform was very restricted.

Right now there's good money in big data and of course virtualization, but it's gonna be relatively short term - mostly because after the current phase of mass adoption, things are going to coalesce around a few packages that then require only medium skills to be used - like it's happened lots of time before.

The trick to $ is doing stuff that's in demand but nobody else is doing

Sorry for the OT

[CS70]

I'm very impressed you both did some assembler. I had a go at Z80 stuff on my ZX81 and Spectrum and later Motorola 68000 on my Atari ST but I was a bit young (stupid) and no Internet to speak of in those days. You had the one or two books you could afford and some magazine articles if you were lucky!

Ah! My first "big" software was a version of Frogger on the Speccy, using Gens3m2. Took a month - mostly because to know how the game progressed had to play it a lot and didn't have so much money..

[James Perrett]

There's 'Processing' too which is the Arduino's programming language (on the surface at least, but C underneath). Arduino not always but often for music stuff

I've had a quick play with the Arduino and assumed that it was basically C with a few bits hidden. I couldn't even find how to do interrupts although I didn't look very hard. It seemed fairly similar to PIC programming in C although the PIC compiler makes you do all the work.

[jellyjim]

It's all web related stuff for me these days, that's where the $ is, but I've done so many different things over the years I can turn my hand to most fairly quick.

A bit OT, but you would be surprised where the money is..

For sure. I contract only. I could chase fintech stuff in the city for crazy day rates but I'd be miserable.

I'm a front-end dev which seems to be a good balance between $rate, how interesting a project is/who for and demand/availability ... well it was before the apocalypse lolz!

[Folderol]

Interesting the number of people on here that do development work.

I did a fair bit of 6502 stuff on the BBC B and master - having an in-line assembler makes all the difference! Later I did some ARM assembler on the Archimedes series, in the days when this was a much simpler processor and an absolute dream to program. All of this was mostly games.

I've also done a fair bit of stuff with the Arduino IDE. This is of course a subset of C++ with some bits of Wiring. This has been mostly for my last employer. From two button speed controllers for motors, fast product counters, right up to a plastic granules silo control system for an entire factory - I confess to being rather proud of that. It ran without fault for 8 years, only shutting down for three days each Christmas.

The trick is to program them in an arduino, then pop the chip out, and stick it in a board with a 16MHz resonator and some I/O isolators.

These days of course I'm concentrating on a certain soft-synth

[ConcertinaChap]

Interesting the number of people on here that do development work.

Did, in my case now I'm retired. Got myself a ZX81 at the age of 30 and realised I liked and was quite good at this programming lark so got myself a transfer within the Civil Service into what was then quaintly called ADP, for Automatic Data Processing. Over the course of the next 30 years I used loads of languages but my undoubted favourite was always C. I wrote a lot of code that used SQL embedded in C which was interesting stuff (for small values of interesting if you weren't into databases too).

But to get back to the topic a bit I fell in love with AMPLE, a Forth-based language for the BBC Micro you could use to write music and control a synth. I got the MIDI controller that was available for the system too, and an MT32 for it to control. Spent many happy hours making computer music, though I did absolutely nothing with it except play it for my own pleasure. This would be back round 1989 or so but I still miss it greatly.

CC

PS Will, I couldn't track down that stall you saw. Even the show organisers were unable to help me

[Folderol]

PS Will, I couldn't track down that stall you saw. Even the show organisers were unable to help me

That's disappointing. I seem to remeber the guy had several things going on so maybe this was an 'extra' he hadn't listed.
I might go to the London show (if it runs this year) and see if he turns up again.

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

I have absolutely no idea what you two are talking about.

[jellyjim]

I have absolutely no idea what you two are talking about.

They've gone off on a little tangent, bless their cottons.

[CS70]

It's all web related stuff for me these days, that's where the $ is, but I've done so many different things over the years I can turn my hand to most fairly quick.

A bit OT, but you would be surprised where the money is..

For sure. I contract only. I could chase fintech stuff in the city for crazy day rates but I'd be miserable.

I'm a front-end dev which seems to be a good balance between $rate, how interesting a project is/who for and demand/availability ... well it was before the apocalypse lolz!

Hehe yeah, was the exact reason I ditched these gigs in the end.

Front end annoys me incredibly so I couldn't do it either - with its daft fashion of using javascript for everything and changing frameworks every week - bad language, bad tools and incredibly high development and maintenance costs. Remembers me of a decade ago when everything was supposed to use XML no matter what - most of the madness has disappeared, but we're still reeling from that with terrible stuff like in maven. I'm all for learning new stuff, but not for learning stuff that is worse than what already exists...

But yes definitely if it's your cup of tea, it's a balanced area.

[CS70]

Interesting the number of people on here that do development work.

Did, in my case now I'm retired. Got myself a ZX81 at the age of 30

Still remember when my mother agreed to buy me one - I couldn't believe it! It was cheap, but not for a 11 years old

[Rich Hanson]

Right now I'm investigating Autodesk's API which access their systems using HTTP. On the one hand it's technically quite simple. On the other hand, it's horrible. But at least it's keeping me from being furloughed for the moment. Give me a C derived language!

[ConcertinaChap]

I have absolutely no idea what you two are talking about.

They've gone off on a little tangent, bless their cottons.

Yes to some extent, but not entirely. Will went to a show in Brizzle dedicated to RISC OS recently and afterwards when the subject of AMPLE came up in conversation he mentioned that one of the guys exhibiting had made a port of the AMPLE language to a more modern environment. I was quite excited by that and tried to follow it up but the website for the event and indeed the organisers themselves had no information about it.

AMPLE was indeed at the intersection of music production and coding and apparently influenced other developments like Csound. Years back I found myself talking to a guy called John ffitch (sic) who was Professor of Computer Music at Bath Uni and I mentioned AMPLE to him. He told me the first piece of computer music to come out of Bath Uni was written in AMPLE.

CC

[The Elf]

I know I have the programming chops to create pretty much anything a computer can achieve, but turning that into anything meaningful for audio is a vast leap into the dark. It seems to present a rare combination of skills to encompass both - and yet there are clearly a lot out there!