SCLOrkSynths is a new Quark that collects over one hundred SynthDefs (some original, some found online) with accompanying Pattern demos of each. Initially made for use by the Santa Clara Laptop Orchestra (SCLOrk), and now we are happy to share with everyone who may find it useful.
Some highlights:
You can browse and audition each SynthDef through an easy-to-use graphical interface.
Patterns are organized by banks (bass, percussion, pads, miscellaneous, etc)
There is a handy button in the GUI (âshow me the codeâ) that opens a copy of the SynthDef and Pattern demo code into a new SuperCollider Document for you to edit and experiment with.
Growing collection of SynthDefs (we hope to add more every Summer) â & everyone is invited to contribute
Author credits are given as metadata within the SynthDef code (a few are missing or are unknown as of yet â if you know the author of any SynthDef that is not credited, please let me know)
Includes helpfile with all basic info to get started
Special shout out to my student Josh Mitchell who worked hard over two Summer internships to put a lot of this together, including writing many of the original SynthDefs in there.
We appreciate any feedback. If you find this useful in your own work or in your teaching, I would appreciate if youâd let me know at some point.
This is a wonderful initiative. There have been many attempts over the years to provide collections of instruments, but this one, because of its more uniform api and easy to explore user interface may have what it takes to become popular. Iâm certainly interested in exploring the available instruments, and in the future perhaps to contribute a few.
A few small suggestions: maybe also very visibly include installation and getting started instructions:
// to install
Quarks.install("https://github.com/SCLOrkHub/SCLOrkSynths");
// to start the ui
SCLOrkSynths.gui;
As a second small suggestion, perhaps consider graying out the âopen more demosâ if none are available for a given synthdef.
Iâm looking forward to exploring the available synthdefs in more detail.
With Quarks.gui I found the whole package and installed it with succes. I didnât fetch a new Directory before. When typing âSCLOrkSâ in the code window it only proposed âSCLOrkSamplesâ and âSCLOrkSoundfileâ not âSCLOrkSynthâ.
Donât know if the following is a bug and maybe only on Mac. Iâm on OSX 10.14.6 or due to my double installing? While testing several synths in the GUI, âshow me the codeâ doesnât work after a while. Killing the server or quitting SC doesnât work either. I have to force quit. Iâll try soon on Ubuntu.
Definitely, much appreciated! Especially nice for students to study writing their own instruments! At the moment I encounter troubles showing the source code. It worked only once (the first SynthDef I tried).
Thanks for the feedback! Are you on Mac, Windows, or Linux? And which SC version? I have tested the show me the code button on Linux using 3.11 and it works.
You can also try this and see if it works â if you can open any source code using this line, then the issue is somewhere in the GUI partâŚ
I can confirm now that it works on my Laptop with latest Catalina and 3.11.1. It doesnât work on my Desktop where I checked with OS 10.10 and SC 3.9.3. So the old SC seemed to be the reason, independant from the gui. I tried and it works also on SC 3.10.4.
After several buttonpushes âplay demoâ and âshow codeâ, I get FAILURE IN SERVER /n_set Node 5863 not found.
From this point âplay demoâ and âshow codeâ buttons donât work anymore
When I want to kill servers I get
server âlocalhostâ disconnected shared memory interface
â/quitâ message sent to server âlocalhostâ.
Server âlocalhostâ exited with exit code 0.
Sorry you are experiencing these bugs. I donât have a 3.10.4 installation to test on, but from previous posts by @dkmayer it seems this Quark wonât work on older SC versions. Are you able to update to 3.11 and try again?
With SC 3.11 and OSX 10.14.6 I still get âFAILURE IN SERVER /n_set NodeâŚâ once in a while, but âplay demoâ and âshow codeâ continue to work
@dkmayer Thanks for the correction, I read your post too quickly. @Benu The âFAILURE IN SERVERâŚâ is a bug that I need to fix in the playback code â Iâll get to it soon. Itâs a harmless bug and hopefully does not interfere with general usage. Glad to hear âplay demoâ and âshow me the codeâ buttons are working for you on 3.11
Ps. @Benu I forgot to mention, in answering to your earlier post â there is a separate Quark called SCLOrkTools, independent from SCLOrkSynths. The classes you saw showing up in your autocomplete (SCLOrkSamples, SCLOrkSoundFile) belong to SCLOrkTools, so you had the wrong Quark installed.
I did not have the time yet to have a closer look, but especially the option to view the source code is phantastic for someone like me that is just starting out to learn supercollider.
I am running SC on Debian testing and on my old 3.8 installation the quark did install witout errors but it did not run.
Good question
I will make small incremental changes periodically, and when these amount to a significant chunk, I will create a new release number (0.2, 0.3, etc). When I make one of these bigger âreleasesâ, I will announce here on the forum. But even before those, if you want to check whether there is any new stuff, you can always do Quarks.update("SCLOrkTools"); to pull in any new files. You can also look directly at the repo page (GitHub - SCLOrkHub/SCLOrkSynths: Collection of SuperCollider SynthDefs (synth definitions) for use with Patterns) to see exactly what has been added recently.
Hope this helps!
Bruno
