SuperCollider for Beginners
Workshop at Instituto Franco-Português, Lisbon, organized by Miso Music Portugal
November 12 to 16, 2007
SuperCollider is an environment and programming language for real time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. It has a large and growing library of sound synthesis modules and supports structural concepts in composition as well as new approaches to musical design like live coding.
The architecture of SuperCollider is optimized for working in real time and for networking with other softwares and machines via Open Sound Control.
SC3 is free and open source, runs under OSX, Linux and (with some limitations) Windows. Binaries of SC3 can be downloaded from
http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/
The participants must bring their own computers with SC installed.
The main platform for the course will be OSX.
In general, Linux or Windows will work as well but you have to install SC by yourself in advance!
In order to run SC under Linux you need to configure emacs as an editor and to install SwingOSC as GUI for SC.
For Windows you need Psycollider and SwingOSC as GUI.
As an alternative Windows users can use this pure:dyne Live CD with Linux which contains among others a ready-to-run version of SuperCollider
Instituto Franco-Português
Avenida Luís Bívar, 91 / 1050-143 Lisboa
google map
November 12 to 16, 2007
Mo 18h00 - 23h30
Tu 18h00 - 23h30
We 18h00 - 23h30
Th 18h00 - 23h30
Fr 18h00 - 19h30
- basic concepts of SC3:
- server (scsynth) and client (sclang),
- synths and synthdefs (patches)
- nodes and busses
- modules for synthesis und processing of audio signals:
- unit generators (oscillators, noise, filters, delays ...),
- buffers and sampling
- envelopes, triggers, control signals
- FFT
- language basics
- objects and messages, classes and methods
- functions, arguments and variables
- operators
- collections (arrays, lists, dictionaries ...) and list processing
- control structures (if, while, do, switch ...)
- generation and organisation of events and sounds
- scheduler and tasks
- streams and patterns
- scores
- recording und non-real-time recording
- synthesis and audio processing examples
- additive synthesis
- granular synthesis
- delay-based effects
- multichannel and spatialization techniques
- analysis and intermodulation techniques
- presentation of projects and realizations
- control and networking:
- Open Sound Control and remote servers
- MIDI and HI devices
- other topics
- GUI overview
- live coding
- extensions
- Classes, PlugIns:
- SuperCollider swiki Public Library
- SuperCollider swiki UGen PlugIns
- ixi-software
- bbcut2, SLUGens ... (Nick Colllins)
- BEQSuite, FreeVerb ... (blackrain)
- JTUgens, HIDControl, MIDIControl ... (Jan Truetzschler)
- Ambisonics, LPC, MoogVCF, Vocoder ... (Joshua Parmenter)
- FreqScope, SCEnvelopeEdit, LoopBuf ... (Lance J. Putnam)
- FFT-, Chaos-, Noise-, Filter- and Granular-UGens ... (Bhob Rainey)
- DataHandling, GraphicsSpace, Sonogram ... (Till Bovermann)
- Ambiem, SonEnvir ... (IEM Graz)
- MidiSensor ... (Marije Baalman)
- Perry Cook's STK (physical modeling) ported to SC (Paul Lansky)
- Additions, Editors, GUI, OSC, clients:
- SCUM, GUI framework for Linux (Stefan Kersten)
- SCEL, emacs interface for working with supercollider (Stefan Kersten)
- JCollider, Java library to build clients for sc server (Hanns Holger Rutz)
- SwingOSC, GUI server controlled by OSC (Hanns Holger Rutz)
- JavaOSC, Java library for talking OSC (Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan)
- scfront, TCL/TK front end for supercollider (August Black)
- Scream, Java environment and API to utilize the SuperCollider3 (Michael Leahy)
- OpenSound Control Home Page at CNMAT