Scenes and reusable material

Ordinary Common Lisp definitions are the basic tool for organizing a set, and defscene adds named compositions that span several channels. This page covers both.

Sound-bearing examples on this page use the SuperDirt banks bd, sn, and hh, and need an attached output backend and a working receiver.

A performer can put machinery in functions or variables while leaving concise, high-level forms in the performance buffer. Ordinary Lisp variables and functions can hold reusable musical and visual material, so no separate configuration language is needed.

For example, a variable can hold material that a short channel form then uses:

(defparameter *kit* '("bd" "hh" "sn" "hh"))

(d1! (s ($ (apply #'cat *kit*))))

The ($ expression) escape is described in pattern literals. To give reusable material its own named, inspectable pattern class, see extending Mora.

defscene adds named multi-channel compositions:

(defscene verse ()
  "A two-channel drum scene."
  (d1 (s "bd ~ sn ~"))
  (d2 (s "hh*8")))

The scene’s body uses the channel forms d1 and d2; see channels, tempo, and transport for channel assignment.

Constructing a scene and activating it are separate operations. Here (verse) constructs the scene, which is then passed to preview-scene and to activate-scene:

(preview-scene (verse))
(activate-scene (verse))

scene-diff supports comparing scenes before committing them.