alda VS Orca

Interesting approach. There has been much activity in recent years in live coding with a lot of interesting solutions.

> most music coding software out there is more focused on experimentation rather than conventional songwriting

Did you have a look at e.g. https://github.com/alda-lang/alda or https://abcnotation.com/? Or e.g. https://github.com/emicklei/melrose is a similar approach as yours. There is also an algorithcmic composition language called SAL which is used in Common Music (https://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/) and Niquist (https://sourceforge.net/projects/nyquist/).

As a semi-serious answer Alda: https://alda.io/

Look into Alda music programming language - it's possible to write classical music with it. It's more like MIDI or classical notation - you don't care about sound but you specify notes.

https://alda.io/

check out https://alda.io/ - it takes some form of music notation and plays it using general MIDI synth

Hi! The way it works is that you save alda files to a text file, then you play them using the alda player using the command line. I haven't looked into Alda 2 yet, but you can take a look at the documentation here

Looks like a previous version was mostly a Clojure DSL, but the latest major version no longer is. There are variables and other useful features we know from other programming languages that aren't mentioned on the landing page.

Of course there are also varying definitions of what a programming language is. For instance, I consider CSS to be a programming language, but I know many people disagree with that position (and that's okay). I personally don't think that a "programming language" must be a general-purpose, turing-complete language. Alda seems to be a non-general purpose, turing-incomplete language. At this point though, we're maybe getting into semantics a bit.

Syntax change: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/blob/master/doc/alda-2-mig...

Lastly, something I want to start exploring more, is funky ways to sequence stuff. There's a program called ORCA which is more programming than performing (unless you're into live coding!) but it can make some really neat stuff. That YT channel has a video going over the basics, too. Something like that might be more of a learning curve than you want, but I love the idea of obtuse ways to make melodies.

I love using ORCA for generative experimentation https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca

In particular - theres a music environment called Orca that is such a great fit for a Roguelike, and porting it to Rust might be a fun medium-size project.

I've downloaded the Linux zip file from the link above and even after unzipping it and going through those files I can't find anything I'm supposed to be able to open. I've tried checking the MANUAL and the README file on the program's Github but I can't seem to get it going there either.