New modular daw on the block

For those who like using Sonic Pi with external synths checkout bespokesynth I saw a tweet about this today, and have given it a brief whirl. Quite a learning curve, but worth the effort. It is amazingly versatile in its facilities, and can accept midi input and supply OSC outputs. I’ve got Sonic Pi driving it and I think it will have great potential with sequencing and much else besides.

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Agreed.
Quirky and idiosyncratic. Quite a bit of potential.
Anything can have its own embedded LFO with Perlin noise and “drunk” motion.
Quite a bit for sample-based processing and looping, including granular synthesis.
Several modules to work with notes, so it acts as a modular environment for MIDI/OSC as well as audio.
Microtuning for arbitrary EDO.
A continuous buffer allowing you to save the last 30 minutes of experimentation is a clever idea for this type of thing.
The Python scripting for live coding is more than intriguing. Unfortunately, that module crashes my Mac.
Even just as a host for VST plugins, it can be quite useful for people who don’t have Max. It even supports MPE out of the box (which wasn’t the case for VCV’s Rack, originally).
Really, this could become something quite powerful. @awwbees has been working on this for ten years. Now that people can provide him with feedback and insight, it’s another game.

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The juxtaposition of graph and code reminds me of Enso which does this in a single language/environment. It seems to me that the graphic approach is great for high bandwidth interaction with the elements whereas the code interface is better for abstraction.

Anyway Bespoke looks super cool :+1:

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Hi @robin.newman

Thanks for this review. Have you succeed to play with this on a raspberry pi ?
do you think we can trigger a wav with an osc message ?
Cheers

I haven’t played further with it yet, and certainly not running it on a Pi or even on Linux. There are quite a few issues on building it on Linux. The process requires juce to be installed and it is fairly picky on versions of python for example. Others are working on this and there is quite a bit on the discord site for bespoke. So far I’ve only set up and controlled an oscillator from SP running on my Mac, controlling both notes and a filter (using midi_cc).
I’m also working through the new TouchOSC and the Dinky OSC controller at present so quite a lot of balls in the air!
EDIT Just seen on the discord site that okyeron has built it and it running on a Pi3B+. Says it took him three days to sort out.

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i’m gonna to wait :slight_smile: but i have tested on windows, it can be fun especially the drum sequencer. Another modular synth to try : sunvox and Sunvox 2.0 is coming soon (https://warmplace.ru/).

A bit off topic but I’ve just built bespoke synth from source on my iMac. It’s switched to using cmake and built very easily. Its scripting is now working, and I can also use vst like vital in it. (using source at commit Resource Cmake Changes; Mac Resource Location Changes (#213) · awwbees/BespokeSynth@ea1cfd8 · GitHub
A lot of activity on the bespoke synth discord site. Quite a lot of people working on it.

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Thanks for the cue! Hadn’t heard of this one.
Since it supports so many things, it surely helps with data sonification.

An interesting point is the whole “without writing a single line of code” aspect of Enso’s framing. While I understand why someone would make such a claim, some aspects of how this works are pretty much like writing lines of code (including the fact that it generates code on the fly which can be tweaked and replaced through other languages).

I’m fascinated by the fact that we have so many patching or visual programming languages, in music and sound processing (including all the modular systems, hardware or software).
I “get” why we get so many.
At the same time, there’s something deep about the way we conceive of sound and music through connecting nodes. Such forms of coding aren’t as popular in the mainstream, apart from “learn to code” systems, game engines, and data science (Orange, Tableau…).

Obviously, Sonic Pi is at the other end of the spectrum in focusing on writing code. My guess is that some people have been working on ways to integrate SPi with visual programming. Can’t remember any.
A hybrid system makes a lot of sense. Sounds like Bespoke works in this hybrid way (though I’ve yet to test the scripting; need to use @robin.newman’s fix or wait for the new release).

Woohoo! It works!
Building from current source was a breeze, compared to most other projects (when building on Mac).
Without setting the flag for Python root, it used Xcode’s Python, which worked fine.
Building from source also solved the microphone permission issue.

So, thanks for the nudge!

And, to bring it back to Sonic Pi…

Is it just me or do others also perceive some potential for collaboration?
Bespoke’s Discord channel is quite active and it sounds like some people there might have similar approaches to the ones we use with Sonic Pi. Sure, Bespoke itself is quite from SPi. Communication between the two apps shouldn’t be too difficult using OSC. Or Python scripting.

In a way, I’m more interested in the “energy” such a project could give us.

Then again, I might be dreaming and the two projects are incompatible for some reason.

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