Processing Class in NYC; Processing for Music?
I’m teaching a class in NYC next month on Processing at Harvestworks, the elegant, musician-friendly coding language:
Processing Class in New York, Online: Art From Code, For Non-Coders [Create Digital Motion]
It’s on CDMotion rather than CDMusic for a simple reason — Processing is especially well-suited to visuals, 2D and 3D. But there is audio and MIDI support in there, as well, and while it’s not exactly Java’s strong suit, certain applications do benefit from this approach in music. (It works nicely with everything from Monomes to Arduinos, too.)
Actually, on that note, I’d be especially interested to hear if anyone is using Processing for musical applications. Let us know in comments. And there are slots free for the class, so do sign up if interested. (If you’re outside NYC — realizing that’s, um, the HUGE majority of you – watch for an announcement soon for how we’re sharing some of this information online for the rest of the world.)
Harvestworks also has a terrific-looking Max/MSP/Jitter intensive in March, but I don’t know how many slots are still open, and it will require US$1275 in tuition.
Image by the awesome eskimoblood, a great source of Processing inspiration!
9. By Peter. 
2008-Feb-27@12:56. 
9 Comments
Leave a CommentPatrick
Processing works great with Everything that uses OSC. I used it several times in conjunction with SuperCollider.
Calculations/Simulations were then made in Processing/Java, and the Soundsynthesis Part was done in SuperCollider.
One could do all the stuff in SuperCollider too, but sometimes Processing/Java suits better for the stuff i want to do.
February 27, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
Peter Kirn
Well, and I don’t see anything particularly wrong with using something else as the sound engine. It suited EA — they used a headless Pd for sound in Spore, apparently. It’s typical in game design in general to separate the sound engine from logic / graphics etc. So Processing for visuals and interactivity has a lot of appeal.
I was also interested in using fmod in Java, a very capable sound engine; I might see if I could write a usable Processing library for the same.
February 27, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
Jesse Kriss
I’m actually just about to publish a new OSC library for Processing that I created for use with Chuck, although it’ll work with anything that speaks OSC.
Chuck is a really nice sound engine, and works beautifully with Processing — they’re both great programming languages, each optimized for their own domain.
February 27, 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Jacob Joaquin
This is the first I’ve heard of Processing. I experimented a little with ImageMagick, with results that weren’t all that great. From a glance, it looks like Processing is light years ahead.
It’s great to hear some of you have had success using OSC to communicate with Processing, as this means I’ll be able to plug it into Csound and ChucK. Can’t wait find to find the time to give it a try.
February 27, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
Fractal
I did the simplest thing ever with processing some time ago. Hopefully once school slows down I can spend more time with it.
February 27, 2008 @ 8:14 pm
lost
All I have to say, is if you want to work exclusivly with Processing for sound, choose you’re library carefully. Some are very frustrating to make music with. Sound, easy. Music or a musical tool? Get ready for headaches.
February 27, 2008 @ 9:26 pm
Oh Travioso
ChucK and Processing work wonderfully together. I’m actually taking a class with Ge Wang, the ChucK creator. He and I have been talking a lot about prototyping different graphical user interfaces for making music.
One of the problems I’ve found with using Processing and a Processing sound library like Sonia or Ess is the inability, at least none that I’ve found, to lower the buffer setting. Playing a sample has a really intolerable latency, whereas Chuck initializes with a very small buffer setting and speaking OSC on the local machine is very fast.
There’s a great processing made music interface called GenPunk created by one of the guys of the Toplap movement. http://www.i2off.org/genpunk/
Taking that code and changing it to send OSC to ChucK is a good little exercise.
February 27, 2008 @ 10:48 pm
Peter Kirn
@lost: Minim works pretty well for sound. Part of the reason it doesn’t work as well on the Mac is because Apple chose not to implement improvements to the JavaSound API introduced years ago.
But, yes, there are limitations here … because sound by its very nature tends toward the modular, using a patching environment like Pd, Max, Reaktor, etc. for sound while Processing handles visuals / interface / networking / etc. has a lot of appeal.
February 27, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
k7lim
My friend Shawna and I created “Jug Hero” at UC Berkeley. We used processing for the graphical interface that tells the players when they need to blow.
http://www.shawnahein.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20
March 1, 2008 @ 4:43 pm
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