In this workshop you will be using p5.js and a software synthesizer to make a Stochastic Tree Sequencer!
How exciting!
You need to download (actually you don't NEED to, but it's how I'll demo things) and install the following software to get everything going. It’s all open source
and multi-platform! Installation support and FAQs are available from each website.
p5.js:
https://p5js.org/download/...but don't worry if you can't get it going. I'll go
through this in my video. There's actually nothing to install for p5.js, so if you download my files, you should be able to
skip this. That website has more general support for using p5.js.
Helm:
https://tytel.org/helm/direct_downloads/
…then download the files you’ll need here:
stochasticTreeSequencer4layer.zip
You can run the STS locally (i.e. on your own computer), but since it's javascript it can also run on the web.
You have to use Google Chrome
as your browser in either case to get the webMIDI stuff to work. The Stochastic Tree Sequencer should work
if you click HERE.
That page only sends MIDI data, it doesn't make sounds.
You'll have to connect your own synthesizer (like HELM) to get it to make music. There may be some other
tweaks you need to your MIDI settings as well to setup your virtual MIDI bus. Those steps will be explained in the videos below.
The fine folks at Ableton have also provided a nice written tutorial on how to set up a virtual MIDI bus,
probably the trickiest part of all this: How to setup a virtual MIDI bus. I don't have a windows machine to demo this on, so check
out that article if you're part of the Microsoft ecosystem.
In one of the videos I also mention that you may need to set up a local server
to have the code run locally on your computer. The instructions I reference for that
are available here: https://github.com/processing/p5.js/wiki/Local-server.
If you end up doing something cool with this, record a video and send me a link!
Good luck! A video-chat group support session will happen on Thursday Oct. 29th, 2020, 4-6pm Eastern Time,
so you can get help then if you have any questions on how to get things running. A link to that video chat will
be sent out to the UWTMC email list, so sign up if you want to attend. Info on how to join the mailing list
is at the bottom of this page.
Videos below!
Part 1 - Basic Setup
Part 2 - How the Code Works
Part 3 - Making it Musical