Xi

Xi (pronounced /ˈzaɪ/) is a musical pattern language inspired in Tidal and SuperCollider for building higher-level musical constructs easily. It is implemented on the Ruby programming language.

Xi is only a patterns library, but can talk to different backends:

• SuperCollider
• MIDI devices

NOTE: Be advised that this project is in very early alpha stages. There are a multiple known bugs, missing features, documentation and tests.

Example

melody = [1,4,7,8,9]
scale = [Scale.iwato, Scale.jiao]

fm.set degree: melody.p(1/2,1/8,1/8,1/8,1/16,1/8,1/8).seq(2),
       gate: :degree,
       detune: [0.1, 0.4, 0.4],
       sustain: [1,2,3,10],
       accelerate: [0.5, 0, 0.1],
       octave: [3,4,5,6].p(1/3),
       scale: scale.p(1/2),
       amp: P.new { |y| y << rand * 0.2 + 0.8 }.p(1/2)

kick.set freq: s("xi.x .ix. | xi.x xx.x", 70, 200), amp: 0.8, gate: :freq

clap.set n: s("..x. xyz. .x.. .xyx", 60, 61, 60).p.decelerate(2),
         gate: :n,
         amp: 0.35,
         pan: P.sin(16, 2) * 0.6,
         sustain: 0.25

Installation

Quickstart

You will need Ruby 2.1+ installed on your system. Check by running ruby -v. To install Xi you must install the core libraries and REPL, and then one or more backends.

If you want to use Xi with SuperCollider:

$ gem install xi-lang xi-supercollider

Or with MIDI:

$ gem install xi-lang xi-midi

Then run Xi REPL with:

$ xi

There is a configuration file that is written automatically for you when run for the first time at ~/.config/xi/init.rb. You can add require lines and define all the function helpers you want.

Repository

Becase Xi is still in alpha stage, you might want to clone the repository using Git instead:

$ git clone https://github.com/xi-livecode/xi

After that, change into the new directory and install gem dependencies with Bundler. If you don't have Bundler installed, run gem install bundler first. Then:

$ cd xi
$ bundle install
$ rake install

You're done! Fire up the REPL using xi.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bundle to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

You can also try things on the REPL without installing the gem on your machine by doing bundle exec bin/xi.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/xi-livecode/xi. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2017 Damián Emiliano Silvani

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.