MusicTalk Home Page

Last Updated: 10^th November 2001

Welcome! You have reached the official MusicTalk homepage. MusicTalk is an integrated software system for computer aided musical composition, based on the programming language Smalltalk. The distribution includes full source code, so that arbitrary extensions can be added by a composer. (However, there are still other levels of abstraction, allowing you to adapt MusicTalk to your needs even without programming in Smalltalk).

MusicTalk 1.42 Released!

MusicTalk 1.42...
...includes the following new (main) features:

• Basic support for generating sound output via CSound. A new CSoundDevice instrument allows integral specification and selection of CSound instruments from within TrackProperties subpane. Some CSound utilities, e.g. the Phase Vocoder Analysis tool, have been integrated too.
• Drag&Drop for Pattern Categories widget of PatternLibrary.
• Read-/Write-Access to PatternLibrary via Store-/ReadValueStreams from within an EventGenerator processor. Through this feature creating a musical piece via the EventGenerator processor can be splitted in separate working steps, i.e. the entire process is easier to handle and becomes more transparent. Each working step can use material generated by any preceeding working step(s). Subsequent results can be reviewed and changed if needed before work is continued. EventGenerator presets can use pattern library as a communication channel. Now pattern library can't just be used for storage of simple patterns but can resemble the structure of an entire composition!!
• Specifying nodes for the GraphItemStream is easier and the resulting spec is more compact now, because node identifiers are not a parameter of the graphnode-spec anymore but a part of the node title itself.
• User selectable time resolution between 24 and 480 ticks per quarter note.
• Auto Advance parameter for MIDIScratchPad allows to set duration of events in step-record mode.
• An external MIDI Editor may be called for manipulating internal MIDI data, e.g. by pressing the Edit External ... button of the MIDIEventListEditor. The path to the executable of the prefered editor can be set by the user. Internal data is automatically updated with externally edited data after session with external editor has been finished.
• An MCICommandPanel tool has been added to facilitate debugging of programming modules which use the Windows multimedia API via command strings.

Previous Releases:

MusicTalk 1.3

• Capability of recording MIDI data in realtime or step mode from an external MIDI source. (currently through a dialog from the bottom subview in the Pattern Library pane as shown in the picture above)
• Instances of MTGenericEventStream allow the usage of Smalltalk from within MusicTalk (Processor: EventGenerator) for generating musical events, without knowing about how to integrate system streams in MusicTalk. Furthermore, using a programming language directly, can sometimes speed up the process of tailoring the system to a users needs.

MusicTalk 1.2

• Localized Preset- and Pattern-Libraries, Documentation and EventGenerator User Types: Saving a song now stores all song related data in a single folder structure, i.e. a single folder contains all constituent data of a song: track sheet, preset- and pattern library, user defined types for the EventGenerator processor and song or preset documentation. This greatly facilitates the exchange of songs and working-environments.
• Preset documentation support for more tools, i.e. not just for the EventGenerator processor, e.g. the MTDrumPatternGenerator or the EventFilter.
• Debugger for tracing the execution of stream definitions in the EventGenerator processor.
• Extended Documentation (although not finished yet)
• New System Types like AbsoluteTime, which allows for providing time values in seconds, minutes or hours.
• New System Streams for the EventGenerator processor, e.g. MTComparisonStream for comparing values.
• Extended functionality of already existing system streams, e.g. the MTArithmeticStream can handle magnitudes (numeric value + unit) now.

Platforms

MusicTalk has been tested to run under Windows 9x . Few tests have been made under Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3. It should run under Windows 2000/ME too, but that was not tested so far.

Disclaimer

MusicTalk can be used free for non-commercial musical purposes only without warranties of any kind!

Download Area:

Feedback and Registration

If you want to be informed about future updates and releases, please send me an email. Any comments or suggestions, bug reports etc. are welcome. Send email to: andreas_mahling@hotmail.com