Music Programming in Minim

John A. Mills, Damien Di Fede, and Nicolas Brix

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

Our team realized that a need existed for a music programming interface in the Minim audio library of the Processingprogramming environment. The audience for this new interface would be the novice programmer interested in usingmusic as part of the learning experience, though the interface should also be complex enough to benefit experiencedartist-programmers. We collected many ideas from currently available music programming languages and librariesto design and create the new capabilities in Minim. Thebasic mechanisms include chained unit generators, instruments, and notes. In general, one "patches" unit generators(for example, oscillators, delays, and envelopes) together inorder to create synthesis algorithms. These algorithms canthen either create continuous sound, or be used in instruments to play notes with specific start time and duration.We have written a base set of unit generators to enablea wide variety of synthesis options, and the capabilities ofthe unit generators, instruments, and Processing allow fora wide range of composition techniques.

Citation:

John A. Mills, Damien Di Fede, and Nicolas Brix. 2010. Music Programming in Minim. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1177855

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Mills2010,
 abstract = {Our team realized that a need existed for a music programming interface in the Minim audio library of the Processingprogramming environment. The audience for this new interface would be the novice programmer interested in usingmusic as part of the learning experience, though the interface should also be complex enough to benefit experiencedartist-programmers. We collected many ideas from currently available music programming languages and librariesto design and create the new capabilities in Minim. Thebasic mechanisms include chained unit generators, instruments, and notes. In general, one "patches" unit generators(for example, oscillators, delays, and envelopes) together inorder to create synthesis algorithms. These algorithms canthen either create continuous sound, or be used in instruments to play notes with specific start time and duration.We have written a base set of unit generators to enablea wide variety of synthesis options, and the capabilities ofthe unit generators, instruments, and Processing allow fora wide range of composition techniques.},
 address = {Sydney, Australia},
 author = {Mills, John A. and Di Fede, Damien and Brix, Nicolas},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1177855},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {Minim, music programming, audio library, Processing, mu- sic software},
 pages = {37--42},
 title = {Music Programming in Minim},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2010/nime2010_037.pdf},
 year = {2010}
}