In the current DIY environment, many musicians can expect to wear a number of different hats. Of course, musicians and singers play instruments or sing for live audiences and in recording studios. Practicing and rehearsing are also daily activities. They have always worn these hats. But there are many other duties that musicians and singers do themselves that have nothing to do with music; traveling to venues, finding locations for performances, and promoting their careers on websites and social media. They may also want to process and generate sound, and this is where audio programming languages step in.
Broadly speaking, musicians are generally technically engaged. The instruments themselves (the hardware) often interface with other devices (amps, mixers, mutes), and composers often encounter an array of different technologies to get their music written, performed and/or produced. With their leaning towards technology, musicians may therefore have an interest in audio programming. Because if you are a computer musician, computer scientist, engineer, and just anyone interested in audio, audio programming offers many possibilities with or without writing lines of code.
This article explores all the main free audio programming languages. They are all released under an open source license, and run on multiple platforms.
We have deliberately chosen not to rate the languages. They are listed in alphabetical order.
Let’s explore the 10 audio programming languages in detail. For each language we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.
| Audio Programming Languages | |
|---|---|
| ChucK | On-the-fly language for real-time sound synthesis and music creation |
| Csound | Sound and music computing system |
| Extempore | Cyber-physical programming environment |
| Faust | Functional language for sound synthesis and audio processing |
| Glicol | Computer music language and an audio DSP library |
| JFugue | Music programming for Java and JVM |
| Processing | Flexible software sketchbook and language |
| Pure Data | Real-time graphical environment for audio, video, and graphical processing |
| RTcmix | Digital signal processing and sound synthesis language |
| SuperCollider | Platform for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition |
Other languages include CLM, jMusic, Nyquist and Sonic Pi.
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