Steno

Concatenative live coding metalanguage

Steno

A little language for spinning long strings of synths

Steno, a little concatenative livecoding language embedded in SuperCollider, makes code for combining synth graphs very short, so that writing endless chains is like writing a single long word. A word is a program. A letter is a synth.

Programs look like this: --ab[(ab)(ab)(ab)]c

ScreenShot

Semantics:

  • For live coding it follows a dual language approach: You can rewrite both the steno program and its sclang interpretation at runtime. So the meaning of each letter, the synth def, can be changed and the corresponding program changes accordingly.
  • Programs are composed of concurrently running processes. In other words, the whole program has no explicit temporal semantics, instead each component (letter) stands for its own temporal unfolding.
  • Only the part of the program that corresponds to code that was rewritten is changed. Thus, elements are kept, replaced, removed or inserted accoding to the difference between the old and the new program.

Steno has a minimal syntax:

  • one letter is one synth: abc
  • square brackets: nested structure is parallel: [ab]c
  • round parentheses: nested structure is serial: [(ab)(ab)]
  • curly brackets: open a stack for operators in postfix syntax: {ab*} or {abc*+}
  • force a full replacement on eval: !abc
  • line ending comments are ignored: abc // this is a comment
  • variable names are optional and can be declared explicitly, see: -declareVariables
ArrayedCollection
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
DiffString
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
ProbingStenoTest
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
UnitTest
Steno
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
StenoSettings
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
StenoSignal
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
StenoStack
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
String
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
VarDiff
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
VarDiffString
Project
Source file
Extension
Superclass:
v0.2
Date
2015-06-09
Git hash
f374fb6214d50e8487ee83560e34c63a0a555d86

Installation

Repository

URL

https://github.com/musikinformatik/Steno

Since

2015-02-24

Last update

2019-11-07

Current version

v0.2

Quark info

name

Steno

since

2014

author

Julian Rohrhuber, developed together with: Armin Badde, Florian Zeeh, Raffael Seyfried, Hans W. Koch, Till Bovermann, and Ron Kuivila

country

Germany

summary

Concatenative live coding metalanguage

organization

Institute for Music and Media Duesseldorf

Possible dependcies

Possible dependants