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MORPHASYNTH

A musical audio synthesizer written in Pd and HTML+JavaScript. This is an exploration of preset morphing (smooth interpolation) using dimensionality reduction with audio descriptors as a means of simplifying user interfaces for setting timbres.

Some wrappers and scripts are provided for compiling as a Linux Jack client (currently broken), an iPad application (currently incomplete) and running the synthesizer using a web browser as the GUI and pd-extended as the sound engine.

Running in Pd only

Tested in pd-extended 0.43.4

There is a simple GUI implemented in PureData. Just open the pd/patches/00_Morphasynth_GUI.pd patch and start playing. We'll probably deprecate this at some point in favour of the HTML GUI.

Running in development mode (HTML GUI in Web Browser, DSP engine in pd-extended)

Tested using Google Chrome 26, pd-extended 0.43.4, Ubuntu Linux 12.04, Windows XP, MacOS 10.7.5, node 0.10.5

For the impatient:

1. Install the dependencies as described below (you only need to do this once).
2. Start the scripts/development.sh script.
3. Open html/index.html in a web browser.
4. Open pd/patches/00_Morphasynth_NO_GUI.pd in pd-extended.
5. Start hacking.

Longer version:

The most practical way to hack or modify the code is to run and debug the HTML+JavaScript code using a web browser, open the Pd patches using pd-extended and use the provided script to allow for communication between both. You'll need to install some stuff first:

Custom Pd externals

In Pd parlance, an external is a plug-in or an extension to the Pd language. They are usually built by people outside the core Pd team. We have included some 3rd party externals and built a few ourselves for this project and you'll need to either use the pre-compiled versions included in this repository or compile them yourself.

If you want to use the pre-compiled versions (recommended), all you need to do is open pd-extended, go to Edit -> Preferences and add pd/externals/bin, pd/externals/bin/tID and pd/externals/bin/directory to Pd's search path.

If you want to modify the externals, take a look at the different readme files in the subdirectories of pd/externals/src.

Development script

To allow communication between the JavaScript GUI code running in a web browser and the Pd sound engine running in pd-extended. You need to run the development.sh (Linux and MacOS) or development.bat (Windows) scripts. To do so, you need to install some stuf first:

1. Install node, nmp and socket.io.

   In Ubuntu Linux:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js  
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install nodejs
    cd vendors/KievII/comm/oscproxy
    npm install socket.io
   

   In MacOS with HomeBrew

    brew install node
    curl https://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
    cd vendors/KievII/comm/oscproxy
    npm install socket.io
   

   In MacOS without HomeBrew (If you don't know/care what HomeBrew is), download and run the MacOS installer from here and then:

    cd vendors/KievII/comm/oscproxy
    npm install socket.io
        
   

   In Windows, download and run the Windows installer from here and then:

    cd vendors/KievII/comm/oscproxy
    npm install socket.io
    
   

2. Run it

   In Linux and MacOS:

    cd path/to/this/repo
    scripts/development.sh
   

   In Windows:

    cd path/to/this/repo
    scripts/development.bat
   

Building the iPad app

Tested in MacOS 10.7, Xcode 4.6 and iOS 6.0

Open the wrappers/ios/Morphasynth.xcodeproj project in Xcode and click Run.

Building the Linux Jack Client

This section is outdated and probably broken

Tested in Ubuntu 12.04 with Jack packages from KSStudio repositories.

0. Get dependencies

sudo apt-get install build-essential qt4-qmake qt4-dev-tools puredata-dev  libjack-dev

1. Get the code

git clone https://github.com/rvega/morphasynth.git repo
cd repo 
git submodule init
git submodule update

2. Compile it

qmake 
make

3. Run it

make run

Interesting stuff in the code

• How to build Pd externals easily with faust.
• How to build Pd externals from scratch with C.
• Write dsp/synthesis algorithms in Pd and embed them in a C++ application.
• How to compile freely available externals for use with libpd.
• Build HTML/javascript interfaces and embed them into a C++ application.
• Build a jack audio application.

License

Copyright (C) 2012 Rafael Vega González
Copyright (C) 2012 Daniel Gómez Marín

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.