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Show HN: What if your synthesizer was powered by APL (or a dumb K clone)? (octetta.github.io)

6h ago by octetta 53 points 27 comments

jodrellblank 2h ago

Marshall Lochbaum's APL-derived language BQN has some nods towards audio synthesis too:

https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN-Musician/synth/index.html

bradrn 1h ago

Also Uiua:

https://www.uiua.org/tour#audio

https://www.uiua.org/tutorial/audio

octetta 1h ago

Wowie! I'M NOT WORTHY! Cool stuff!

bradrn 1h ago

It’s not my language, to be clear! In fact I’ve never even tried it… my array programming experience so far has mostly been with J.

octetta 1h ago

Doesn't matter. Just happy people are doing weird stuff like this and appreciate the share. I looked at a bunch of APL-ish implementations and kind of ran with the K-simple code (links on the repo). What background do you come to J from? Another programming language? How do you like it?

bradrn 1h ago

> What background do you come to J from? Another programming language?

Yes, I’m very fond of trying out different languages. My main language for personal projects is Haskell.

> How do you like it?

I haven’t used J for a while, actually, but I recall finding it a bit confusing, especially when rank manipuations are involved. It has a larger vocabulary than most array languages, which I felt made it hard to learn. It was great fun though!

octetta 46m ago

Fun. I've lost count of the languages I've learned and gotten paid to use over the years, but it's mostly very exciting to add a new one to the list.

Haskell is one I haven't used yet. The closest I've come to that is a weekend fling with OCaml... much respect for the ML work though!

I hear you for the complexities in J though. I've intentionally limited k-synth to single letter upper case variables and the verbs are also one character... I might regret this at some point.

Have fun! It makes the world a better place!

octetta 2h ago

BQN kicks-ass and I've spent hours listening to the Array Cast podcast while in SoCal traffic. I'll check his stuff out with an eye towards the audio stuff.

I'm an APL newb... while I've been writing code-for-cash forever (C, etc.) I've had a long-time interest in APL languages, but I'm just messing around after working on waveform generation for another sound project I have in the works (https://github.com/octetta/skred ... https://youtu.be/L5-3gBpJsAo?si=JdBlntzn4doY-c3s).

While I was working on this I remember the first book I saw in the public library on computer programming was about APL (probably sometime around 1976)... I didn't have access to a "real computer" for another year after that and no APL for decades, but some ideas stick around, LOL.

octetta 1h ago

On the C-side, I'm going to add a UDP listener to the code so I can send k-synth incantations live from Emacs (something I did for my skred program at the suggestion of an Emacs user). Let me know if anyone wants to know about this when it's usable. On the desktop app side, I use miniaudio (thank's Macron) so this is portable to the usual suspects. I also made a single header file cross platform midi library which I have some devious plans for in this space. Stay tuned.

jart 3h ago

How do we get it to play Kompressor? https://youtu.be/9tlA0IyKjiI

octetta 3h ago

Wowie... Jart commented! I'm on it my friend. Certainly sequencing is a good thing to add.

octetta 1h ago

A warning... if you save a setup to JSON, it naively stores the generated waveforms put in slots and the notebook, so the files can become quiet large. I have a plan to just keep the code behind the waves and regenerate the waveforms at load time.

octetta 3h ago

I have a CLI and desktop versions on github (all MIT license)

https://github.com/octetta/k-synth https://github.com/octetta/ksynth-desktop/

it's been a blast to play with... and a great excuse to learn array languages

UncleEntity 58m ago

> ...and the right-to-left evaluation logic.

The evaluation order doesn't matter as much as you don't really know what kind of function/operator you have at parse time so have to do a bunch of shenanigans to defer that decision until runtime while still keeping it efficient. Kind of fiddly to get right but once it works, it just works.

Claude and me (and a ton of decades old research) pretty much figured out all the complications in the APL parse/eval stack (https://github.com/dan-eicher/AiPL).

octetta 45m ago

I'm looking forward to checking out your stuff...

hmokiguess 3h ago

Pretty cool, one suggestion for the site would be to have templates you can quickly load, copy, edit, and share. Sort of like strudel.cc has!

octetta 2h ago

At any rate, in case it's hard to see, definitely try loading the dm-bell.ks patch, putting it in slot one so the melodic pad can play it... it's quick and dirty to see what's capable in a few keystrokes... although I'm sure the PD and ChucK and SC and ... wizards could put me to shame in a showdown, LOL.

octetta 3h ago

i wimped out and just have the patches being loaded from my github repo. good suggestion though.

xrd 2h ago

Did you know you can embed strudel?

https://strudel.cc/technical-manual/project-start/

octetta 2h ago

Strudel (and PureData, and ChucK, and SuperCollider, and AMY) are all great projects, but they weren't scratching my itch, so after I got laid off from a FAANG role, I rage/anxiety started writing code for stuff fun-ner than writing code for radios and routers and satellites... this is where my cortisol / dopamine lead me. No disrespect to those other projects... all have been inspirational and are a heck of a lot more "respectable" than my playground code.

hmokiguess 2h ago

I don’t think this is relevant to my analogy there, what were you thinking here?

xrd 1h ago

You are right but I wondered if octetta had considered combining his ui with strudel. I am fascinated by it and have been attempting to riff off it and create new creative interfaces.

octetta 1h ago

I'll take a look... it's probably not obvious, but the language engine is actually written in C and emscripten-ed to WASM, so I've already crossed several bridges to get this done. Absolutely riff off this interface... would love to see what you can make. My stuff is MIT licensed, so tear it up! On a side note, I was able to meet Sam Aaron of SonicPi / Tau5 at Goarmire back in September which was cool... he teased us with Super Collider in JS then and since, he's crossed the finish line on that stuff. We live in amazing times! Have fun!!!

steveBK123 3h ago

This is great

octetta 3h ago

thanks!

jdontillman 2h ago

See also: Stanley Jordan, "APL For Music".

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/75144.75174

(!!!)

(Wait, what? That Stanley Jordan?) (Yep.)

octetta 1h ago

Wow! I had no idea, will look here for inspiration too. Thanks!