funktor

Overview

An opinionated music construction playground build on top of the excellent csound-expression library.

Quick Example

A quick and dirty example song highlighting:

• Stochastic note generation
• Drum tab DSL
• Applicative melody construction

Doesn't sound great, mostly here for didactic purposes! The src directory contains other songs as modules.

Link to a .wav compiled from the below. GitHub doesn't seem to want to stream this, so Save As... if you want to hear it.

song :: SongM
song = do
  -- 4 on the floor bass drum, on for 16 beats, off for 16 beats
  kicks <- do
    d <- drums "X _ _ _|O _ _ _|O _ _ _|O _ _ _" Tr808.bd2
    env <- sqrEnvM 0 16
    return (d & withEnv env)

  -- Closed hats, always on
  cHats <- drums "X O o ." Tr808.chh

  -- Open hats, always on
  oHats <- drums "o _ o _|_ _ o _" Tr808.ohh

  -- Group the drums
  let drms = har [kicks, cHats, oHats]

  -- Bassline - 5 notes from two chords at 2/3 velocity every 4 beats
  bass <- do
    let notes = take 5 $ minorChord D ++ reverse (majorChord Bb)
    compileI (withDeepBass 1.0 fmBass1) $ Pch <$> notes ?? 6 ?? (2/3) ?? 4

  -- Take 16 random notes from D minor, over 3 octaves, with some notes silent.
  lead <- do
    notes <-
      sequence
      $ replicate 16 randomFrom
      ?? expandScale [7, 8, 9] (minorScale D) ++ replicate 10 (\_ _ -> Silent (1/2))
    compileI razorLead $ notes ?? (1/2) ?? (1/2)

  -- Add some reverb FX to the instrs
  let instrs = har [ rever2 0.5 <$> bass
                   , rever2 0.2 <$> lead
                   ]

  -- Play all the above at once
  return $ drms =:= instrs

-- Set BPM and track length
songEnv :: SongEnv
songEnv = SongEnv { _bpm=140
                  , _beatLength=64
                  }

To play the song in real-time e.g. in GHCi:

dac =<< runSongM songEnv song

Or to compile to a WAV:

runToDisk =<< runSongM songEnv song

Design

Follows mtl style, where a song is represented by a SongM monad transformer stack combining various effects useful for music creation:

• RandT for stochastic music generation
• IOT for loading samples, other external files
• ReaderT pattern over a song environment governing BPM and duration
• SE as the base monad (this is the csound-expression side-effecting monad)

data SongEnv = SongEnv { _bpm :: Bpm
                       , _beatLength :: Int
                       }
type SongT = ReaderT SongEnv (RandT StdGen (IOT SE))
type SongM = SongT (Seg Sig2)

Requirements

• stack or cabal
• csound 6.17 or 6.14

Running

• stack ghci or cabal repl should both drop into GHCI
• nix-shell will enable e.g. cabal --enable-nix repl or cabal --enable-nix run
• Began as a stack project but Cabal/Nix seem better supported on M1 macs so I'll probably remove Stack and go Cabal-only if I need to introduce new deps. For now it should run as either Cabal or Stack as I haven't made any configuration changes for a while.