Writing code for music may still seem a remote notion to the vast majority of even geekier digital musicians, but as exemplified by the language Overtone, it looks very different than coding once did. Whereas sound code was once a type-and-render affair, new coding environments focus on live coding. They use elegant, lightweight modern languages that take up less space. And they can be surprisingly musical, coming remarkably close to just typing “play a c major chord.”

Not to say that you won’t look plenty geeky doing it — but, hey, if you can’t impress slash frighten your friends a little…

Using a brew of powerful free and open source tools, all available via GitHub and running here on the Mac (though any OS will work), contributor Sam Aaron walks through the program at top and demonstrates some musical examples. After the jump, a much longer screencast walks you through how to get up and running with the emacs text editor for live coding.

Key ingredients:
overtone @ github
emacs live coding @ github
supercollider for sound production
clojure, the language, modern dialect of lisp

Features, as described by the creators:

Overtone is a toolkit for creating synthesizers and making music. It provides:

• a Clojure API to the SuperCollider synthesis engine
• a growing library of musical functions (scales, chords, rhythms, arpeggiators, etc.)
• metronome and timing system to support live-coding and sequencing
• plug and play midi device I/O
• simple Open Sound Control (OSC) message handling

Note the MIDI support — code, like many other things on the computer, isn’t very tangible. But you can quickly go to MIDI or OSC for some hands-on control of what you’re making. I have to say, some of this is quite a lot easier and less abstract than what you see in a Max/Pd-style environment. We’re blessed to have such choices in music making. Let us know if you try it out.

More videos and screencasts from this Cambridge-based artist:
Sam Aaron on Vimeo
http://twitter.com/samaaron

CDM’s Matt Ganucheau contributed to this story in San Francisco.

The Internet, having satisfied itself yesterday with video that faked a Beyonce who couldn’t sing, now imagines news that can. And Steve Reich is proven ahead of his time — again. (Congrats on the Pullitzer – it took them just five decades to notice!)

Yes, Antares’ Auto-Tune plug-in – now so ubiquitous in mainstream, non-audio-engineer knowledge that it’s become a generic description like “Kleenex” – can be applied to everything. (We, um, can only hope these industrious YouTubers are using legally-licensed copies – that is, until Antares releases a 99-cent iPhone app.) And so, hilariously, we imagine a world of news sung hip-hop style.

As it happens, this digital foolery does reveal something deeper. One of the joys of language in general, certainly true of English, is the degree to which musical-like inflection turns our spoken words into songs. In English, these inflections are more decorative than syntactical – good news, as unlike a language like Mandarin, the wrong inflection won’t get you in trouble. But I think a lot of the texture of the music of English-speakers – native and non-native alike – is influenced by the rhythms and melodic contours of our speech. Would Jazz have happened in a country without American English and its regional dialects? Given the sounds of “talking” trumpet mutes, my guess is it would have sounded quite different.

Poor video, but gives you the idea (where’s the official Steve Reich YouTube channel?):

The Auto-Tune News is intentionally silly, of course. But even without digital aids, people have been finding songs in recorded speech. Take composer Steve Reich: without the aid of Auto-Tune, he found surprisingly in-tune sounding melodic fragments in interview recordings for pieces like Different Trains, and later built an entire opera around the technique. (The Cave, with its accompanying video, below.)

Antares, for their part, is keeping a good sense of humor about all of this – and laughing all the way to the bank. There news stream has followed the pop culture references to their product, and even jokingly suggested they would introduce Direct Mind Access Composition Technology on April Fool’s Day. (Don’t laugh too much: I heard composer Jon Appleton, sitting alongside fellow luminaries Bob Moog, Laurie Spiegel, Morton Subotnik, and others, suggest a musical brain hat at a panel on the future of music. I’m happy to actually shut down my mind occasionally, so I don’t entirely understand the appeal.)

Previously:

AutoTune: The Song, a $99 Version (Hide!), and Some History

And here’s part I of Auto-Tuning the news. Daily Show, eat your heart out:

Thanks to decrepitude in comments. (Erm – that being the dude/dudette’s alias, not actual decrepitude in comments. That we’re not thankful for.)