plugdata VS supercollider

Max4Live is what got me into Ableton, it also got me out of Ableton...

As someone who had been using PureData for quite a while the idea of having that kind of development environment integrated into the DAW was super exciting, unfortunately the actual implementation leaves a lot to be desired; personally the final straw was when I realized that the Max process space was global to Ableton so that global variables would leak between devices (no sandboxing)... This may have been addressed in further releases as I was a very early adopter, but all of the other issues pointed out by the other posters still stand.

If you're looking for a platform agnostic alternative to Max4Live there is PlugData[0] which is a VST implementation of PureData -- the open-source origin of Max and created by the same authors.

And there is the Grid for Bitwig[1] which offers a modular graph based MIDI/DSP programming environment that runs at audio rate and is fully integrated into the DAW as a native solution! The Grid is somewhat limited as it isn't extensible, but it supports >95% of common use cases and is used internally to build Bitwig's native devices. Hopefully in the future Bitwig will extend it's open API surface to include building custom Grid modules -- in the meantime PlugData is perfectly acceptable patch for doing unusual logic calculations and doing left-field things like interfacing with robotics :)

[0] https://plugdata.org/

Automatonism is ongoing, and if you're looking for better UX (as well as a ton of other excellent features, like making plugins and compiling for Daisy) then you should absolutely check out https://plugdata.org!

Sweet! It works now in plugdata, too!

An alternative for this is PlugData -- a native VST host for PureData (the open-source sibling of Max; same original author)

The Rust audio environment might need help, if you're into that:

https://rust.audio/

Maybe this might be worth a look, too:

https://plugdata.org/

It's a recent attempt to make Pure Data more accessible for less technically inclined users.

Well, Miller created Max, which back in those days was more about composition than synthesis and relied on external hardware to create sound. Another fella took Max and developed the commercial product and developed it some more. During this time home computers became good enough for realtime synthesis so Miller developed PD which combined aspects of Max with realtime audio synthesis capabilities. Max thought this was pretty great so integrated pd into Max which gave us Max/MSP, Max is Max Mathews who developed the Music(n) family of programing languages and MSP is Miller S. Puckette.

I would not say that pd or Max/MSP is more approachable, they are pretty even these days unless you stick to vanilla pd with no externals which almost no one does, the main differences is that Max/MSP gives you all you need out of the box but pd can run just about anywhere including in plugins if you are that sort. Max/MSP is considerably more modern in aesthetic but PlugData[0] and PurrData[1] offer more modern interfaces for pd with a few new tricks, PlugData is a plugin version of pd (also standalone), Purrdata is a JavaScript rewrite of the interface with prepackaged externals and solid documentation. And we have a handful of other varieties of pd each which have their own slant and can be found on puredata.info.

0: https://plugdata.org

Not a programmer, but a producer here, and I’m interesting in getting into programming and I don’t know much about it but I want to learn JUCE (and Pure Data; which I know is also available now as a vst! and here’s a link for that https://github.com/plugdata-team/plugdata

This is an important objective of the rapidly-progressing plugdata project! The patcher is based on pure data so you can live patch yourself into deep space with any GP computer (a RasPi works fine), but has a sleek, calm, efficient, and themeable UI. In the last couple of weeks has grown a compiler that is working in its preliminary form both compiling in to C and flashing a Daisy synth dev board. The eventual hope is to gain compatibility across microcontrollers for not just audio synthesis, but for any creative purpose.

The project is here: https://github.com/plugdata-team/plugdata

The builds are coming thick and fast. 0.6.2 is so far behind the daily builds right now that 0.6.3 is going to be an enormous leap in functionality. Tim and the development team are doing a spectacular job of staying focused and cranking out bugfixes and features sometimes multiple times a day.

Link to the audio programming language / server they're using in the article: https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider

For the intrepid, especially those annoyed with the purported input-sluggishness of musescore et al, an interesting text-based alternative is LilyPond https://lilypond.org/

My dad wrote an opera using LilyPond in vim, though I believe these days he's actually doing more with supercollider, which skips sheetmusic and goes right to sounds: https://supercollider.github.io/

Weirdly enough,I got into programming through music. I got into making experimental electronic music and ended up learning SuperCollider. Figured I’d have to get a real job at some point and I liked learning Supercollider enough that I figured I should try to go back to school and learn some more useful programming languages

So you’re wondering what would making music with code look like? The tools I’m familiar with are TidalCycles, Sonic Pi, and SuperCollider. I’m having a hard time describing what it’s like to make music with tools like these so here’s a video of a performance. One person is live coding the music and the other is live coding the visuals. I think it’s super cool how the music is improvised and built over time by layering commands. Some keywords you could search to see more examples would be Algorave and Livecoding.

So far mostly Vim (not for coding, just writing so far), NetHack, Firefox, and mpd and ncmpcpp. Also mpv occasionally. I'm planning on installing SuperCollider at some point too and getting back into that, but that shouldn't be too heavy either.

I would say no there aren't any sample packs for this kind of stuff because this entire scene developed around using a samplers and sampling as well as some computer tools like Max/Msp, SuperCollider, Recycle, Cool Edit Pro and some other stuff I am quite likely forgetting at the moment. Also you might look at some of the IRCAM stuff too.

Sonic pi is basically a wrapper for the amazing language Supercollider (https://supercollider.github.io/). I highly recommend watching Eli Fieldsteel's excellent tutorials on it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzsOOiJ_p4&list=PLPYzvS8A_rTaNDweXe6PX4CXSGq4iEWYC) to see some of what its capable of (I think he is almost a finished a new book on it as well).