Sound and Music Computing

in Schools


  • About
  • Resources
  • Workshops
  • Links
SMCS Links Page
(Last updated: November 7 2016)
Computing At School (CAS)
  • Main website
  • http://computingatschool.org.uk/
  • CAS Online Forum (mostly for education professionals, subscription required)
  • http://community.computingatschool.org.uk/door
MIT Scratch and derivatives
  • Scratch 1.4 (Recommended: multi-platform, sound recording and playback, uses system GM synth)
  • http://scratch.mit.edu/
  • Snap (formerly BYOB, browser-based. GM synth voices not available.)
  • http://snap.berkeley.edu/
  • Scratch 2.0 (requires Flash; support for sound currently incomplete and inferior to Scratch 1.4)
  • http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/
Dedicated ("domain-specific") music and audio programming languages (text-based)
  • Csound
  • http://www.csounds.com/
  • SuperCollider
  • http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/
  • Tabula Vigilans – MIDI composition (Richard Orton, via CDP)
  • http://www.ensemble-software.net/CDPDocs/html/ctv.htm
  • Nyquist - Lisp-based, supported in Audacity
  • http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/nyquist
General music and audio programming
  • MIDI specification
  • http://www.somascape.org/midi/tech/spec.html
  • SDL – Simple Directmedia Layer
  • http://www.libsdl.org/
  • Audiality – API and engine for games audio
  • http://audiality.org/
  • W3C Web Audio API
  • http://www.w3.org/TR/webaudio/
  • MusicXML
  • http://www.musicxml.com/
Live Coding
  • General Community Page
  • http://toplap.org/
  • Chuck
  • http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
  • (See also Sonic Pi 2 below)
Multidisciplinary Studies
  • Cambridge Centre for Music and Science
  • http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/CMS/
  • Music Psychology (Victoria Williamson)
  • http://musicpsychology.co.uk/
  • Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music
  • http://www.smcm-net.info/index.html
  • Graph Music
  • http://www.teachingmusic.org.uk/story.aspx?lngStoryID=14832
  • Sounds Amazing (physics of waves)
  • http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/feschools/index.htm
  • Music Cognition Lab, UPEI
  • http://www.upei.ca/~musicog/index.html
  • SMC Network Research Community
  • http://smcnetwork.org/
  • Sound and Music (UK arts organization)
  • http://www.soundandmusic.org/
SMC Education Projects
  • Sonic Pi 2 – scripting language for the Raspberry Pi, Mac(64bit only) and Windows (initial port)
  • http://sonic-pi.net/ (Page includes code and sound examples)
  • Wolfram Language and Mathematica for the Raspberry Pi
  • Includes a wide range of audio and music computation tools including sonification
  • http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/
  • Computer Science For Fun – music pages
  • http://www.cs4fn.org/music/
  • Earsketch – Georgia Tech. Computational Music Remixing
  • http://earsketch.gatech.edu/
  • UMass Lowell “Performamatics” Scratch-based projects
  • http://teaching.cs.uml.edu/~heines/TUES/ProjectHome.jsp
Language extensions and modules
Python
  • PyGame: API for creating games, with procedural audio support
  • http://www.pygame.org/wiki/about
  • Audiolab (uses Numpy)
  • http://www.ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp/members/david/softwares/audiolab/sphinx/index.html
  • MIDIUtil module: simple MIDI file API
  • http://code.google.com/p/midiutil/
  • Improviser: automatic music generation
  • https://pypi.python.org/pypi/improviser
  • Mingus music package
  • http://code.google.com/p/mingus/
  • Timeside (+ Web Audio tools)
  • http://code.google.com/p/timeside/
  • Music21 (MIT)
  • http://mit.edu/music21/
  • RTMidi: Python wrapper for the RtMidi C++ library
  • https://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-rtmidi
  • Pyo: procedural audio library (used by Cecilia)
  • http://code.google.com/p/pyo/
Haskell: MIDI programming package
  • http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/MIDI
PHP: MIDI class
  • http://valentin.dasdeck.com/midi/
Ruby
  • Gem WAVE file library
  • https://github.com/jstrait/wavefile
  • micromidi MIDI realtime I/O library
  • https://github.com/arirusso/unimidi
  • (see also Sonic Pi above)
.NET
  • NAudio - .NET and MIDI
  • http://naudio.codeplex.com/
C, C++ libraries
  • Synthesis Toolkit (STK) from CCRMA
  • https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/stk/index.html
  • MoMu (API with STK for iOS platforms)
  • http://momu.stanford.edu/stk/
  • Mozzi: Synthesis library for Arduino (Tim Barrass)
  • http://sensorium.github.io/Mozzi/
Objective-C, Swift (for OS X/iOS)
  • AudioKit (synthesis, processing, analysis, uses Csound, open source)
  • http://audiokit.io
Java
  • Java Sound: sound and MIDI API
  • http://www.jsresources.org/index.html
  • jMusic: music composition framework
  • http://explodingart.com/jmusic/
  • JES: Jython Environment for Students, includes sound and MIDI tools
  • http://code.google.com/p/mediacomp-jes/
  • see also: http://www.mediacomputation.org/
  • JSyn: Audio Synthesis API
  • http://www.softsynth.com/jsyn/
  • Beads (Oliver Brown): real-time audio library
  • http://www.beadsproject.net/
Educational Hardware
  • One Laptop Per Child (OLPC): uses Csound for its audio engine
  • http://one.laptop.org/
  • Raspberry Pi: includes Scratch, Sonic Pi and Python as standard
  • http://www.raspberrypi.org/
  • Phil Atkin's Raspberry Pi Synthesizer blog (something for hardware enthusiasts!)
  • http://raspberrypisynthesizer.blogspot.co.uk/
Online Interactive Resources and Tutorials
  • Alice: graphical 3D game programming. Supports soundfile playback
  • http://www.alice.org/index.php
  • Blockly: Google’s web-based graphical programming editor
  • https://code.google.com/p/blockly/
  • Etoys: media-rich programming environment. See also OLPC above
  • http://www.squeakland.org/
  • MIT App Inventor: supports sound file playback
  • http://appinventor.mit.edu/
  • Microsoft Kodu: games programming, supports sound file playback
  • http://www.kodugamelab.com/
  • Snap (derived from MIT Scratch): sound file playback and MIDI
  • http://snap.berkeley.edu/
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