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This article is about the programming language. For other uses, see Supercollider.

SuperCollider

Developed by	James McCartney and others
Operating system	Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, FreeBSD [1]
Type	Audio programming language
License	GNU General Public License
Website	http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/

SuperCollider is an environment and programming language originally released in 1996 by James McCartney for real time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition.^[2][3]

Since then it has been evolving into a system used and further developed by both scientists and artists working with sound. It is an efficient and expressive dynamic programming language which makes it an interesting framework for acoustic research, algorithmic music and interactive programming.

Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License in 2002, SuperCollider is free software.

Contents 1 Architecture 2 Supported operating systems 3 The SuperCollider synthesis server (scsynth) 3.1 Clients 4 The SuperCollider programming language 4.1 GUI system 4.2 Editing environments 4.3 Code examples 5 Live coding 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Architecture

Since version 3 the SuperCollider environment is split into a server, scsynth, and a client, sclang, that communicate using OpenSound Control.

SC Language combines the object oriented structure of Smalltalk and features from functional programming languages with a C family syntax.

The SC Server application supports a simple C plugin API making it easy to write efficient sound algorithms (unit generators) which can then be combined into graphs of calculations. Due to the fact that all external control in the server happens via open sound control, it is possible to access its functionality from other languages or applications.

[edit] Supported operating systems

SuperCollider runs under Mac OS X, Linux, Windows and FreeBSD. For each of these operating systems there are multiple language-editing environments and clients that can be used with SuperCollider (see below).

SuperCollider is also available on a Live CD called pure:dyne (a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian).

[edit] The SuperCollider synthesis server (scsynth)

SuperCollider's sound generation is bundled into an optimised command-line executable (named scsynth). In most cases it is controlled from within the SuperCollider programming language, but it can be used independently. The audio server has the following features:

• OpenSound Control access
• Simple ANSI C plugin API
• Supports any number of input and output channels, including massively multichannel setups^[4]
• Gives access to an ordered tree structure of synthesis nodes which define the order of execution
• Bus system which allows to dynamically restructure the signal flow
• Buffers for writing and reading
• Calculation at different rates depending on the needs: audio rate, control rate, demand rate

[edit] Clients

Because the server is controlled using OpenSound Control, a variety of applications can be used to control the server. SuperCollider language environments (see below) are typically used, but other OSC-aware systems can be used such as Pure Data.

"Third-party" clients for the SuperCollider server exist, including rsc3, a Scheme client, and hsc3, based on Haskell.^[5] These are distinct from the development environments mentioned below because they do not provide an interface to SuperCollider's programming language, instead they communicate directly with the audio server and provide their own approaches to facilitating user expression.

[edit] The SuperCollider programming language

This article is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this section to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (December 2007)

The SuperCollider programming language is related to Smalltalk but with a C family syntax, and has the following features:

• Constant time message lookup
• Real time garbage collection
• Lexical closure
• Functions as first class objects, function composition
• Coroutines
• Default argument values, variable length argument lists and any order keyword arguments
• Both lexical and dynamic scope
• Closure creation via partial application (i.e., explicit currying / schönfinkelling)
• Tail call optimization
• List comprehensions
• Reflective and Literate Programming
• Allows to represent properties such as time and pitch in variable degrees of abstraction

[edit] GUI system

• Class system for generation of graphical user interface for applications
• Programmatic access to rich text code files
• Vector graphics

[edit] Editing environments

The Mac version of SuperCollider is most commonly used from within its own Mac-specific (Cocoa) interface; and the Windows version comes with a (cross-platform) Python-based development environment (named PsyCollider). Alternatively, SuperCollider code can be developed and run from a number of common development environments such as:

• GNU Emacs (Linux, Mac)
• Vim (Linux, Mac)
• Eclipse (Windows, Linux)
• gedit (Linux)

For each of the above environments, a plugin enables the real-time execution of SuperCollider code and interaction with the audio server.

[edit] Code examples

// play a mixture of pink noise and an 800 Hz sine tone
{ SinOsc.ar(800, 0, 0.1) + PinkNoise.ar(0.01) }.play; 

// modulate the sine frequency and the noise amplitude with another sine
// whose frequency depends on the horizontal cursor position
{ 
	var x = SinOsc.ar(MouseX.kr(1, 100));
	SinOsc.ar(300 * x + 800, 0, 0.1) 
	+ 
	PinkNoise.ar(0.1 * x + 0.1) 
}.play; 

// list iteration: create a collection of indices multiplied by their values
[1, 2, 5, 10, -3].collect { |item, i| item * i }

// factorial function
f = { |x| if(x == 0) { 1 } { f.(x-1) * x } }

[edit] Live coding

As a versatile dynamic programming language, SuperCollider can be used for live coding, i.e. performances which involve the performer modifying and executing code on-the-fly^[6]. A specific kind of proxies serve as high level placeholders for synthesis objects which can be swapped in and out or modified at runtime. Environments allow sharing and modification of objects and process declarations over networks^[7]. Various extension libraries support different abstraction and access to sound objects, e.g. dewdrop_lib allows for the live creation and modification of pseudo-classes and -objects.

[edit] See also

• Comparison of audio synthesis environments

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official SuperCollider home page
• The SuperCollider Swiki
• SuperCollider users mailing list
• Realtime Software Synthesis for Psychoacoustic Experiments (1998)
• Algorithmic Composition Methods for Breakbeat Science (2003)