Cosy

a COmpact Sequencing sYntax

http://compusition.com/web/software/cosy

Description

Cosy is a custom language for composing musical patterns and general purpose sequencing. It strives to be as concise as possible, because the less time we spend inputting our ideas into the computer, the more time we have to make cool stuff.

Author

Adam Murray (adam@compusition.com)

Status

This project is immature. The syntax is not finalized, so I can't guarantee I won't change things in a way that will break backward compatibility.

There are probably lots of bugs right now.

Use at your own risk!

Dependencies

Cosy depends on the following Ruby libraries:

• treetop (which depends on polyglot)
• midilib
• midiator
• osc (optional)
• gamelan (optional)

To run Cosy you will need to install the gems for those libraries:

gem install treetop
gem install midilib
gem install midiator

Note that midiator-0.3.0 or higher is needed for direct output on OS X

Optionally, if you want to use OSC support, you will also need to:

gem install osc

Optionally, if you want to use the Gamelan scheduler you also need:

gem install gamelan 

Running Cosy

Currently there are three main use cases for Cosy:

• Live playback of a MIDI sequence
• Generating MIDI files
• Running Cosy inside Max/MSP

An executable is provided to live playback and generation of MIDI files:

bin/cosy

Run this script with no arguments for usage instructions. Some example input files are provided in the examples folder.

To run things inside Max/MSP you need the latest version of my ajm.ruby object which I have not released yet. Check back soon.

Documentation

The closest thing to documentation right now is the online preview at:

http://compusition.com/web/software/cosy/online

Future

TODOs:

• Allow independent control over the note duration and the inter-note-onset intervals (i.e. support staccato vs. legato)
• A way to change the current octave, pitch, velocity, and duration without outputting anything
• Pre-render to a Timeline object to make rendering and embedding Cosy easier
• Methods for transposition, inversion, retrograde, inverting chords, etc
• Allow chains to be formed across scopes. For example, support:
  $melody=e:q d c:h; $melody:mp
• When chaining, I don't always want the pitch to advance when the rhythm advances (especially when rests are involved). Introduce ^ as the mechanism for indicating that a chain should not advance (c d e):(^h. -q)
• Documentation! And more examples.
• Release updated version of ajm.ruby and the Cosy Max/MSP object
• tick-rate generators, output faster than the sequencing rate, for doing things like CC LFOs and pitch bend envelopes
• a clean API for manipulating the sequencing tree on-the-fly as the sequencer is running (interactive control as well as self-modifying sequences)
• arpeggiators
• pitches from summed intervals across independent parallel sequences a la Numerology
• new node traversal behaviors, for example loops that go up/down instead of starting over when the last note is reached

I am considering making renderers for csound and lilypond at some point.

I'd like to explore using Cosy to sequence animations with Jitter and Processing.