[Pythonsound-devel] Re: [Csnd] Pmask manual (fwd)

[Maurizio U. P. <um...@ti...>]

It's an answer to a mail asking what it pmask.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

About OMDE/pmask

pmask is a set of Python (www.python.org) modules for numeric score
generation. Its first releases had basically the same set of algorithm
present in Cmask by Andre Bartezky.

The difference between Cmask and pmask is:

-in Cmask is a dedicated language: it is quite simple, but not flexyble
-in pmask you write Python programs: it is just a bit complex but you gain
in flexybility.

I think that writing in Python (using pmask) the equivalent of a Cmask
program is not more complicated that the original, it is only that you
have to type more.

Flexibility means that:
-you can add more basic components (generators)
-you can mix Cmask-like generation algorithms with other totally
different score generation or processing algorithms
-you can apply the same tool to similar kind of problems (3d graphics and
probably 3d graphic animations)

In successive releases pmask in fact added more generators (not present in
Cmask) and a additional step, very simple (like everything in OMDE/pmask)
but very important: events were no more stored as strings but in dedicated
Python objects.

Of course you can print one of such object and get the standard numeric
score notation for event, but you can also operate easily on that
object in order to post-process them, aggregate it with other objects and
operate on such groups of objects.

At this point I wanted to make a distinction between the way you produce
the score events (pmask) and the way you rapresent and process them
(OMDE). This is way I refer to the current development version of "pmask"
as OMDE/pmask.

For example: the Event and Aggregate classes are in omde.score, the
cloud() or sequence() algorithm are in pmask.algorithm (or in pmask) and
generator and modifiers (the difference in pmask is less important) are in
places like pmask.rng (pseudo random number generators), pmask.chaos
(non linear generators), pmask.miscellaneous (List, Mask, Quantizer,
Attractor, Choice etc).
Someone else could use something completely different to produce OMDE
objects than pmask and the continue the processing using OMDE or other
OMDE-enabled tools.
OMDE has also modules for pitch (omde.pitch, integrating the
SCALA database of scales) and rhthm (omde.rhythm), both of which have room
for being greatly extended and improved.

The CVS version OMDE/pmask includes contributions by prof. Zipfel in the
omde.pitch and omde.rythm and a new omde.plot module to plot PDF sketchs
out of your composition. Additional work is  required in order to really
integrate these features.

This OMDE rapresentation of events as objects relies on the Python
language object model. Going a step further, it opens the door to more
abstract kind of musical objects, always espressed as Python objects.
These objects are not directly mapped into score events but into whole
groups of events and their properties are not the list of properties of
the single events but properties of the set as a whole. This is a
different kind of thing from the "aggregate" above and is not implemented
at the moment in OMDE/pmask even if I'm already using a less formalized
(and less functional) implementation of this idiom.

The nice thing is that you can use the same tools to generate score
events, aggregates (via a proper contructor) or such kind of meta-event.

Since many people potentially interested in OMDE/pmask comes from other
algorithm or computer assisted composition experiences (Cmask, SCORE11
for example), I'm starting to think that could be useful to add "native
languages" parsers and converters inside OMDE. Such languages are very
simple in general so it is feasible. I already studied SCORE11 and
implemented the parser and part of the convertion of SCORE11 in pmask
objects.

Hope this helps,

Maurizio Umberto Puxeddu.