u/SimonGrayin r/Clojure • Recommends
Functional Composition (music theory with Clojure)
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Functional Composition - Chris Ford
ClojureTV
111K subscribers • 136 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 7 people: 6 on Hacker News and 1 in engineering communities.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2013 to 2023.
- Presented by Chris Ford, software developer
Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.
30K views13 years ago7 recommendations
Programming languagesGraphics and audioFunctional programmingAudio and DSPCreative coding
Chris Ford demonstrates how to build complex musical structures, culminating in a Bach canon, using Clojure and the Overtone audio environment.
Music theory is one of the most naturally elegant and functional domains. It's a perfect fit for Clojure, which is why the Overtone audio environment makes hacking sound so much fun. Chris will start with the basic building block of sound, the sine wave, and will gradually accumulate abstractions culminating in a canon by Johann Sebastian Bach. By the end you should agree that anyone who's a developer is a musician too - even if they don't know it yet.Why it's here
7 people recommend thisWhat people say. Highly recommended as a beautiful demonstration of functional programming concepts applied to music theory and audio synthesis.
agumonkeyon Hacker News • Recommends
On “The Haskell School of Music (2012) [pdf]”
I didn't read the haskell paper yet, but one talk about music and programming that I enjoyed a lot is 'functional composition' by chris ford, using clojure. link to this video It simply groups and layers simple waves until he can describe a full theme. In case you didn't saw it and have 30 minutes of free time.
kremlinon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Creative computing with Clojure”
link to this video Great, great talk linked to in the article, about using Clojure to abstract and live-code music. It actually helped me to more appreciate a funny episode in Star Trek: Next Generation where the hologram doctor becomes an esteemed musician among a species that previously didn't have music, because they saw it as an amazing mathematical feat.
zphdson Hacker News • Recommends
On “Live Coding in Sporth: A Stack-Based Language for Audio Synthesis [pdf]”
Here's another similar library for Clojure. link Recommend this talk that made Music 'click' for me. Also fun if you are trying to read GEB and generate cannons. link to this video
1MachineElfon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Overtone – programmable, live music in Clojure”
Recently I watched a great presentation0 about Overtone by Chris Ford, delivered back in 2012. It was also the first time I saw my SO interested in a programming language talk - she isn't familiar with programming, but she does have a music background. 0 link to this video
grayreston Hacker News • Recommends
On “Ask HN: Will soon have lots of time and little money – how to spend it?”
Learn Clojure via Overtone! link to this video I personally have to either wake up early, wake up and exercise, or start working outside my apartment (e.g. eat lunch out and take my computer) in order to not fall into slacking off all day. Assuming I don't fall into one of my slacking off patterns (e.g HN/Reddit/Twitter tech "news" all day), I've never had trouble staying engaged. I think of it as working every day but sometimes I get paid for working on other people's projects and others I get to enjoy working on my own. My personal priority list of things to do puts sleep and waking up without an alarm as the top priority.
yayitsweion Hacker News • Recommends
On “The sound of Erlang: How to use Erlang as an instrument”
Reminds me of this Clojure talk- link to this video Using functional composition to build a Bach canon out of pure sine waves.