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Re: [sc-users] How did you learn SC? (was: Textures, drones)
Hello all,Might as well join in the fun. I, like several people I'm sure, learned Max/MSP first, using it for a couple years before I started my masters degree. In my masters program during the first semester there was a SuperCollider class during which I was very much on the fence about using the language. However, by the end after becoming more familiar with SC and doing a couple larger projects I was 100% sold. Its been my main instrument for 3 years now, and I've been fortunate to have several people around who are very good at it themselves to draw knowledge and inspiration from. I feel like I've learned a good amount for three years, however when I go looking at the source code for UGens, for instance, I am immediately reminded how much more there is to learn, which really is one of the great things about SC! Another one is that it encouraged me to begin learning other languages like Java and C++ (so much to learn, so little time!). Looking forward to reading more of these,
Chad
On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 9:29 AM, Wouter Snoei
<mailinglists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi guys,
nice to hear these stories on how you came in touch with SC. Here's mine:
I had a first encounter with SC1 (!) when I followed the Sonology program at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. Someone showed me some of the principals and triggered me into trying more. I was already familiar with Max on ISPW (MSP wasn't there yet), Lisp and CSound (in particular the combination of CSound and ACToolbox, a lisp based composition toolbox by my main teacher Paul Berg). It wasn't until SC2 came out though when I really dived into it. I even bought my own copy of it back then, so I could also use it at home. Towards my graduation in 2000 I had completely mastered SC2 on my own (it wasn't used much by anyone else there back then, and there certainly were no classes on it), and I continued to use it as my main "language" basically until today. It helped me understanding other languages like _javascript_ and PHP, and I basically used it for almost everything (even for bookkeeping). I stayed with SC2 and ditto OS9 for a long time, long after SC3 had arrived. I finally switched to SC3 in 2005/2006, when I got the assignment for creating an interface for the dutch Game Of Life WFS system. Over the past years I've created a lot of classes and extensions that proved handy for myself, and I turned those into wslib a few years ago to give something back to the community that supports my main language and working environment. Which is you :-)
cheers,
Wouter
Op 19 sep 2010, om 17:33 heeft axl99 het volgende geschreven:
Hi,
since this list seems to be concerned mainly with technical issues, I'm not sure wether my questions fit here, but I'm interested in the musical/technical background of the people on the list. How did you get involved with SC? What kind of coding experience did you have when you started out? How did you learn the basics? What were your first projects?
I'll start with myself: Like Jerome, I first got exposed to programming through web stuff like PHP and JavaScipt I did at work. Being mainly a musician (guitar player, singer), when I found SC I was immediately fascinated by its power and the promise of freedom to create exactly the musical inviromments I was envisioning. But I didn't know much more about programming than processing web forms and looking up stuff in a database. Nevertheless I plunged into it, worked trough the tutorials, wrote a lot of really terrible code, wasted many many many hours, got overwhelmed and frustrated. So I took a break of about a year. One day I fired up SC again, had an idea and the first experience repeated itself. I took another break and now I'm back. This time, with a clearer vision of what I want to do. For now, I'm leaving all of the dsp stuff alone and try to get to grips with SCLang. My little LPD8 step sequencer is getting more powerful every day and although I still think my classes suck, I'm getting stuff to work.
I've given up on the idea of organizing my learning. I learn what I need to know to get the stuff I want to do done and don't worry about what I don't know (which in the case of SC is a hell of a lot).
Cheers,
Axel
On 18 Sep, 2010, at 19:53 , Jerome Covington wrote:
Thanks Axl. How advanced are you with SC programming? I never have enough time to devote. I'm always expecting that as I become a better _javascript_ programmer through my web development work that the OOP and func programming ideas will trickle over into SC.
But I need an organized way to learn the native objects. I took a workshop but need more exposure.
--
Regards,
Jerome
jeromecovington@xxxxxxxxx
--
http://www.jeromecovington.com
On Sep 18, 2010, at 4:00 AM, axl99 <axl99@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Jerome,
beautiful piece. Thanks for posting.
Axel
On 18 Sep, 2010, at 02:47 , Jerome Covington wrote:
Hi list,
I'm still struggling to use code to produce the music I hear. If anyone has time to listen to the following piece my next step is to recreate a similar group of textures in SC.
http://soundcloud.com/jerome-covington/view-from-the-canyon-i-ii-iii-iv-v-vi-vii
The textures I am primarily interested in are the pointillism that opens the piece and the swelling drones further in. There are beats later but I have less interest in that.
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Regards,
Jerome
jeromecovington@xxxxxxxxx
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http://www.jeromecovington.com