Welcome (and how to get started!)

[Kassen]

Welcome to our new ChucK forum!

ChucK is a relatively young programing language for music, it runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. ChucK's focus is on expressive code with a strong emphasis on reasoning about time and timing.

http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/

ChucK is relatively easy to get into (one of it's aims is education) and it's relatively compact and easy to read (which is a big advantage in livecoding). ChucK programs get compiled to a virtual machine, more parts of the program can be added at any time while it runs and they can be recompiled and updated while they run as well.

Because of this and because ChucK supports a wide range of input devices (MIDI, OSC, the computer keyboard (make your own hotkeys!) and HID devices like joypads) ChucK is very suitable for quickly trying out new ideas on controll or interface design. It might be worthwhile to learn a little ChucK just to be able to control traditional synths with joypads or algorithms like Markov chains. It might also be worthwhile to learn ChucK just to get a new perspective on time, timing and concurrency in music. Building your own instrument for live or studio use is also very possible.

It's also free and open source so there is nothing to lose.

Right now ChucK is very young so not everything is finished and optimised yet and there are bugs. This comes from it being a ongoing experiment. I encourage everybody to be a part of that experiment and report on what works and what doesn't as well on how it could work better.

So; how do you get started?

The first step would be downloading ChucK and installing it. The latest version can be found here:

http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/release/

I also recommend joining the mailing lists for announced updates and the list for users in order to hear about the latest developments and for asking questions.

http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/community/

So; how to get started writing your own programs?
You could start reading the manual But I think it's more fun to start with running some of the example programs that come with your download. If you are unsure about which ones to try I recommend trying the "otf" series of files, Those are a set of files that ca be added to the virtual machine one by one and together they form as simple techno loop. Try and modify and recompile some of the code and see what happens. Where does what aspect of the sound come from?
After that it may be interesting to look at some of the interfaces, maybe you'd like to use a joypad or MIDI controller to interact with those loops.

Once you get going a lot of the manual and the more complicated examples will make a lot more sense.

As you start to write more serious programs you may want a specialised editor. Well, we have two to choose from! First of all there is the Audicle;

http://audicle.cs.princeton.edu/

The Audicle is a specialised developers environment for ChucK, it comes with a build in virtual machine and various ways of representing the contents of the virtual machine and the sound it generates in realtime 3d. It's like a luxury model for those with a bit more experience with ChucK and a graphical card that can keep up.

for more modest needs or minimalists there is the mini Audicle;

http://audicle.cs.princeton.edu/mini/

The mini Audicle is more like a traditional text editor but with ChucK syntax highlighting and a build in virtual machine as well. Graphical interfaces elements like leds and sliders are being developed for it as well.

What way of ChucKing is good for you depends on your personal tastes. It's completely possible to switch between different ways depending on your mood or even use several at the same time. Because the editors are also still in heavy development it's recommended to start out with the command prompt. If you are unsure about how a prompt works with regard to changing directories and so on refer to your OS's manual; you only need a few of the commands and none are very hard.

Happy ChucKing! Do not hesitate to open a thread here if you have questions or would like to share some interesting code. For harder questions it may be best to post to the mailing list. It's not unlikely that you'll chance upon a bug or two. If so report it to Ge (gewang at cs dot princeton dot edu). Because this is a young and experimental language that's in constant development it may happen that you find that the manual is out of date, incomplete or just plain wrong. Since the manual is meant to explain how it all works feedback from new users on where it's unclear is already valuable. We have a Wiki page where you can put all such notes, requests or your own explanations.

Handy tip; when posting code examples to the board (please do, it's fun and sure beats mp3 in both size and sound quality!) make sure to disable HTML in your post or you have the risk of the board getting confused about all the triangular brackets.

[kijjaz]

yes yes! i vote for chuck also.
for me, as a newbie.. i'm quite used to working in the terminal/command-prompt
so using chuck executable (on windows & linux) is okay to me.

for new users not familiar with command-line, i recommend miniAudicle
so that you can try chucking really easily
(just edit and Add Shred)

but working in the terminal/command-prompt is pure fun for performance.
using chuck --loop in one terminal
and add, remove, or maybe kill in another terminal
(and chuck --shell so that we don't have to type chuck everytime)
is what i recommend playing also.

let's keep chucking. i'm quite new in the field
but i can see chuck'd be a great language for performance and composition!
i'm gonna be around here to share some new/newbie experiences.
take care all.