Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!ncar!tank!galton!thisted
From: thisted@galton.uchicago.edu (Ronald A. Thisted)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Musical output from numerical simulations
Keywords: musical output, numerical simulations, LSC
Message-ID: <558@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 27 Oct 88 17:28:02 GMT
References: <12689@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Sender: news@tank.uchicago.edu
Reply-To: thisted@galton.UUCP (Ronald A. Thisted)
Organization: Dept of Statistics, Univ of Chicago
Lines: 50

In article <12689@duke.cs.duke.edu> hsg@romeo.cs.duke.edu (Henry Greenside)
writes [edited for NetNews]:
=>For a demo, I would like to write a LSC application that would
=>present output as musical tones. The integration of o.d.e.s is
=>easy, the translation into sound is not.
=>
=>Alternatively, you can imagine having time series
=>consisting of floating point numbers at equal intervals
=>of time. One would like to map the range of the time
=>series into the range of audible frequencies and
=>"listen" to the output, with possibly multiple voices
=>(several time series played at once).
=>
=>I was wondering if anyone out
=>there in netland has done something like this and could
=>send me some source code to imitate?
=>
=>	Henry Greenside

In 1981 I gave a paper at the 13th Computer Science and Statistics
interface conference entitled, "The effect of personal computers on
statistical practice."  (The proceedings of the conference were
published by Springer).  I discussed exactly the idea that you raise
here, and I played a tape of some time series with different
characteristics.  For that work, I wrote a program for the old Apple ][
(remember, it WAS 1981) in Apple Pascal, which had a few sound
primitives built into it.

The Mac, of course, is a much better sound engine.  For the neophyte,
MS BASIC (version 2 or better) is very easy to use to get something up
and running that uses special features of the Mac (such as windows,
graphics, buttons, and sound) because it has builtin primitives for
doing so.  It also comes with demo programs for music (and other stuff).

/** flame retardent **/
Yes, I know about why BASIC is an abhorrent language.  But MS Basic
isn't nearly as bad as BASIC, per se, and incorporates many (but not
all) of the things one would want in a serious language.  I do a lot of
c programming, both in UNIX and Mac environments.  But MS BASIC is
really great for some things, and I have found it invaluable for
prototyping.  In any event, send flames to me by email if you must;
comp.sys.mac is too crowded anyway.
/** end flame retardent **/

If you email me your usps address, I can send you a copy of my paper.
I'm not sure that I can still lay my hands on the Pascal code, though.


Ron Thisted
Department of Statistics/The University of Chicago
thisted@galton.uchicago.edu