Connecting music studio rigs with Perl?

freakingwildchild has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Let me introduce myself first before I'll just spew my guts all over you ;)

I've been busy the last 15 years with both programming, designing and creating music at the same time. This has given me some neat ideas overtime about combining technology with music. I've opted for a computerless studio to be able to perform live but also to keep the rendundancy of my studio at all times high.

My PC has crashed (and burned!) a few times now and I've been loosing some nice gems I've had programmed, sampled or drawn. We can say the word "backup" already but if that one failed too you're nowhere! Next to that, tactical feedback is very important to me, which a PC screen (with midi-controller) could never offer, just like a real sequencer under my hands, where I know the limitations by reading the manual and using imagination with waveforms by the use of my hands...

Although, I've had a MOTU interface 8x8 ports; I've switched back to my old Roland A880 patchbay which still works best; but sadly not for sale anymore like they used to make those. The MOTU worked great, if the software was presently working and if the computer was free and not in update or anything like that. I'm a technologist, but hey, please relax! Technology should make my life easier not more difficult troubleshooting all the time!

Still, I've bought myself a smaller 2x2 midibox, better in price and better in size too; which brought me to the idea; how about connecting studio's together being able to record over the Internet, using MIDI, being able to do remote performance on the fly? I know there will be problems to solve like latency but those could be managed by using compression a/o format conversion on the fly to lower bitrates; a kind of "network for studios"...

Call me crazy, I don't care; I've got this idea for some years now in my head and now I've fixed my studio back to working form I'm sure willing to do a few things with it within the reach of my capacity. Maybe there are Open Source projects or pointers available which might point me to the right direction with this or if you got any comments, always welcome to share!

I've been thinking MIDI could be complex; although by sharing one to two channel(s) per user, by accepting normal non-exclusive messages to start with, there could be some nice 8-to-16-user-fun to be made...

With regards,
Freaking Wildchild

update: Interesting tidbits found ...

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/sa/pubs/txt/current-mwpp.txt
http://openmuse.org/transport/mip_intro.html

Comment on Connecting music studio rigs with Perl?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Connecting music studio rigs with Perl? by angiehope (Pilgrim) on Feb 05, 2009 at 12:11 UTC
Hi! Have you ever worked with CSound? Hacking Perl in Nightclubs on perl.com describes how to connect Perl and CSound using OSC (Open Sound Control) messages via TCP/IP. The CSound Journal also contains two articles on using Perl and CSound, but they rather focus on generating CSound code with Perl: Perl and Csound - Part I Perl and Csound - Part II CSound is a complex audio programming language in itself, but it looks quite flexible to me. Have fun!	[reply]
Re^2: Connecting music studio rigs with Perl? by angiehope (Pilgrim) on Feb 05, 2009 at 12:17 UTC
P.S: Chapter I: A Technical Look at Bits and Pieces contains a detailed description of using Perl and CSound in a web based audio installation.	[reply]
Re: Connecting music studio rigs with Perl? by ELISHEVA (Prior) on Feb 05, 2009 at 09:09 UTC
Was something like http://www.indabamusic.com/ what you had in mind? If not, perhaps it would help to clarify what you would do differently? May be you have a different market in mind (e.g. small producers rather than bands/musicians)? A different level of technological support/quality/user options? A different use context? More elaborate or different control over privacy/IP rights/marketing/revenue production? Other? Best, beth	[reply]
Re^2: Connecting music studio rigs with Perl? by freakingwildchild (Scribe) on Feb 05, 2009 at 17:55 UTC
I'd have the smaller market in mind, to allow smaller producers to gain access to more facilities by using the Internet. The Creative Commons license system comes in mind to "combine" already existing productions/buffers with incoming buffers for example ...	[reply]
Re: Connecting music studio rigs with Perl? by Anonymous Monk on Feb 05, 2009 at 08:20 UTC
http://www.indabamusic.com/	[reply]
Re: Connecting music studio rigs with Perl? by mea (Initiate) on Feb 05, 2009 at 21:27 UTC
Also this might be interesting: ninjam.com	[reply]
Re^2: Connecting music studio rigs with Perl? by Anonymous Monk on Feb 08, 2009 at 00:21 UTC
make sure to check out <http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/>	[reply]
Re: Connecting music studio rigs with Perl? by Elias (Pilgrim) on Feb 08, 2009 at 17:07 UTC
The best open source pointer I can give you is : http://64studio.com. A distribution dedicated solely to music production (and it works great). On a perl related note: I am still hoping that someone will take up the challenge of producing something like MidiStroke (http://www.charlie-roberts.com/midiStroke/). It gives an easy to use interface to map midi notes to any keystroke, combination of keystrokes or even keystroke sequences. This would be a great adition to what is already happening on the opensource music production front.	[reply]