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Introduction

A Clojure library for making music with edn data. It uses Alda underneath. There are probably bugs...or maybe your music just sounds bad. It could be that. Think about it.

Try the playable examples!

In addition to playing music, you can export to mp3, wav, or midi files, or even export to a data URI for playing on the web. With that, you can embed music in a ClojureScript game and the music will rebuild automatically when you edit it.

NOTE: OpenJDK 11 is required! Newer versions of the JDK removed the com.sun.media.sound.* classes.

You may be interested in a very similar library I made for Nim called paramidi.

Getting Started

You can generate a new project with the Clojure CLI Tool:

clj -Sdeps "{:deps {leiningen/leiningen {:mvn/version \""2.9.0\""}}}" -M -m leiningen.core.main new edna my-music

It will contain a README with all the commands you need to use.

Documentation

; first hit middle c on the piano
[:piano :c]

; hit all twelve notes
[:piano :c :c# :d :d# :e :f :f# :g :g# :a :a# :b]

; by default you're on the 4th octave, but you can change it
[:piano {:octave 3} :c :d :e :f]

; maps let you change attributes for anything that comes after it
[:piano {:octave 3} :c :d {:octave 4} :e :f]

; notes are 1/4 length by default, but you can change that too
[:piano {:octave 3} :c :d {:octave 4, :length 1/2} :e :f]

; you have to change note lengths often so here's a shorthand
[:piano {:octave 3} :c :d {:octave 4} 1/2 :e :f]

; you can change individual notes' relative octave with + or - inside the keyword
[:piano {:octave 3} :c :d 1/2 :+e :+f]

; a number following the + or - changes it by that many octaves
[:piano {:octave 3} :c :d 1/2 :+2e :+2f]

; if there is no + or - before the number, it sets the note's absolute octave
[:piano {:octave 3} :c :d 1/2 :2e :2f]

; with all that, we can write the first line of dueling banjos
[:guitar {:octave 3} 1/8 :b :+c 1/4 :+d :b :+c :a :b :g :a]

; chords are just notes in a set
[:piano #{:c :e}]

; you can change the length of chords just like single notes
[:guitar {:octave 4}
  1/8 #{:d :-b :-g} #{:d :-b :-g}
  1/4 #{:d :-b :-g} #{:e :c :-g} #{:d :-b :-g}]

; to play two instruments simultaneously, put them in a set!
#{[:banjo {:octave 3} 1/16 :b :+c 1/8 :+d :b :+c :a :b :g :a]
  [:guitar {:octave 3} 1/16 :r :r 1/8 :g :r :d :r :g :g :d]} ; the :r means rest

The keyword at the beginning of your vector has to coorespond with something from Alda's list of instruments. After that, you can mix and match notes, chords, note lengths, and so on.

Development

Licensing

All files that originate from this project are dedicated to the public domain. I would love pull requests, and will assume that they are also dedicated to the public domain.