wondering on Haskell kickstarter project: VST plugin / mobile synthesizer

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Anton Kholomiov

18 Dec 2015 18 Dec '15

6:22 a.m.

I'm wondering if it's good idea to make crowd-founding project for a synthesizer written in Haskell. What's your opinion? Would you like to support such a project? I've made a prototype: https://github.com/anton-k/tiny-synth It's a desktop synthesizer, a collection of instruments. About 150 instruments written in Haskell. It works with midi keyboard. You can try it out with USB-midi device. The UI is written with Python and audio engine is written with Haskell. I use my library csound-expression to generate the code for Csound. The Csound is an audio programming language it can be used as C library. There are bindings to many languages and it can work on Android / iOS. Right now I've made a prototype for desktop. The big plan is to create VST/AU/Lv2 plugins and mobile versions for Android and iOS. [1] https://github.com/anton-k/tiny-synth [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/csound-expression [3] https://github.com/spell-music/csound-expression Cheers, Anton

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Evan Laforge

20 Dec 20 Dec

1:41 p.m.

New subject: wondering on Haskell kickstarter project: VST plugin / mobile synthesizer

It sounds hard to get enough interest for significant funding, because it's a niche of a niche. And, at least if I am anything to go by, the niche is occupied by especially iconoclastic sorts. For instance, even though I'm very much interested in that kind of thing, and would like to do something myself, I would only do it for the the purpose of using something better than MIDI, because there are already tons of MIDI using VSTs out there. Doing something different would give an opportunity to easily support things that are awkward in MIDI, and offline incremental rendering would allow expensive synthesis and unlimited polyphony. Also it would be nice to have a programmable sampler which is not as hilariously terrible as kontakt. So I wouldn't really be personally interested, unless it had some unique gimmick that made it more interesting than all the existing VSTs, or if perhaps it were about establishing low level libraries that would make it easier to do what I'm interested in. In fact your existing work with csound-sampler is already somewhat along those lines since it makes all the csound stuff available with a nice haskell frontend. But even then... though I wish you luck and I do support the general idea of more of this kind of thing happening, software development is really expensive. It seems to me pretty much the only way it can work is for an interested individual to do on their own for free. Either that, or an established product with aiming at the most mainstream possible market, e.g. ardour. And even then it will likely struggle. On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 3:22 AM, Anton Kholomiov wrote:

...

I'm wondering if it's good idea to make crowd-founding project for a synthesizer written in Haskell. What's your opinion? Would you like to support such a project?

I've made a prototype:

https://github.com/anton-k/tiny-synth

It's a desktop synthesizer, a collection of instruments. About 150 instruments written in Haskell. It works with midi keyboard. You can try it out with USB-midi device.

The UI is written with Python and audio engine is written with Haskell. I use my library csound-expression to generate the code for Csound. The Csound is an audio programming language it can be used as C library. There are bindings to many languages and it can work on Android / iOS.

Right now I've made a prototype for desktop. The big plan is to create VST/AU/Lv2 plugins and mobile versions for Android and iOS.

[1] https://github.com/anton-k/tiny-synth [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/csound-expression [3] https://github.com/spell-music/csound-expression

Cheers, Anton

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Anton Kholomiov

21 Dec 21 Dec

5:03 a.m.

New subject: wondering on Haskell kickstarter project: VST plugin / mobile synthesizer

@Evan Thanks for detailed and sincere reply. I can see your points. That VST/mobiles market is very crowded business and it's really hard to compete with super giants especially when you don't provide any significant change or creative opportunity in the app. So I think this project is going to be more a prove of the concept and example that it's really possible to create real-time audio with Haskell and wrap it in non-Haskell UI. Hope I would manage to do the mobile version of it too some days. I would really like to add non equal temeprament scales, I feel that it can make a difference to the mood of the music. Maybe it's better to look in the direction of media installations. The Python has many cool libraries for non-trivial user interaction like computer vision. It would be great to stream this data in Haskell generated synthesizer. Maybe something can be created in this area. Anton 2015-12-20 21:41 GMT+03:00 Evan Laforge :

...

It sounds hard to get enough interest for significant funding, because it's a niche of a niche. And, at least if I am anything to go by, the niche is occupied by especially iconoclastic sorts. For instance, even though I'm very much interested in that kind of thing, and would like to do something myself, I would only do it for the the purpose of using something better than MIDI, because there are already tons of MIDI using VSTs out there. Doing something different would give an opportunity to easily support things that are awkward in MIDI, and offline incremental rendering would allow expensive synthesis and unlimited polyphony. Also it would be nice to have a programmable sampler which is not as hilariously terrible as kontakt.

So I wouldn't really be personally interested, unless it had some unique gimmick that made it more interesting than all the existing VSTs, or if perhaps it were about establishing low level libraries that would make it easier to do what I'm interested in. In fact your existing work with csound-sampler is already somewhat along those lines since it makes all the csound stuff available with a nice haskell frontend.

But even then... though I wish you luck and I do support the general idea of more of this kind of thing happening, software development is really expensive. It seems to me pretty much the only way it can work is for an interested individual to do on their own for free. Either that, or an established product with aiming at the most mainstream possible market, e.g. ardour. And even then it will likely struggle.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 3:22 AM, Anton Kholomiov wrote:

...
I'm wondering if it's good idea to make crowd-founding project for a synthesizer written in Haskell. What's your opinion? Would you like to support such a project?

I've made a prototype:

https://github.com/anton-k/tiny-synth

It's a desktop synthesizer, a collection of instruments. About 150 instruments written in Haskell. It works with midi keyboard. You can try it out with USB-midi device.

The UI is written with Python and audio engine is written with Haskell. I use my library csound-expression to generate the code for Csound. The Csound is an audio programming language it can be used as C library. There are bindings to many languages and it can work on Android / iOS.

Right now I've made a prototype for desktop. The big plan is to create VST/AU/Lv2 plugins and mobile versions for Android and iOS.

[1] https://github.com/anton-k/tiny-synth [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/csound-expression [3] https://github.com/spell-music/csound-expression

Cheers, Anton

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Evan Laforge

4:24 p.m.

New subject: wondering on Haskell kickstarter project: VST plugin / mobile synthesizer

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 2:03 AM, Anton Kholomiov wrote:

...

@Evan

Thanks for detailed and sincere reply. I can see your points. That VST/mobiles market is very crowded business and it's really hard to compete with super giants especially when you don't provide any significant change or creative opportunity in the app.

So I think this project is going to be more a prove of the concept and example that it's really possible to create real-time audio with Haskell and wrap it in non-Haskell UI. Hope I would manage to do the mobile version of it too some days. I would really like to add non equal temeprament scales, I feel that it can make a difference to the mood of the music.

This is a basic requirement for me, because most of the music I'm interested in doesn't use equal temperament. MIDI makes it really inconvenient though, which is one reason why if I did my own synthesizer it wouldn't use MIDI. Supporting multiple MIDI channels is about as convenient as MIDI can get, but very few VSTs do even that. But computers are fast and loading say 8 copies of the same VST actually works, though it's aesthetically unappealing. Actually, it only works for cheap synthesis like FM... so maybe it doesn't work that great. As far as I can tell, if you're using MIDI there is no satisfactory answer. Some synthesizers can load scala files too, which more complicated and not as flexible, but it can sidestep the multiple VST hassle. Of course it's static so it only works for instruments like percussion that are not pitch continuous. Even though there is a crowded market of giants, from my perspective they all have fundamental holes in their functionality, but it works for them because they aim at a market not interested in those things.

...

Maybe it's better to look in the direction of media installations. The Python has many cool libraries for non-trivial user interaction like computer vision. It would be great to stream this data in Haskell generated synthesizer. Maybe something can be created in this area.

Indeed, it does sound interesting. Ultimately it's whatever is interesting enough to you that doing it would be its own reward. I did a little experimentation with interactive musical toys in python back in college, and it was kind of neat... though ultimately didn't pursue it any further. With a powerful language like haskell and access down to the low level synthesis you could express more complicated kinds of control.

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Anton Kholomiov
Evan Laforge