Siren: A Comprehensive Framework for Audio
and Music in Smalltalk

Stephen Travis Pope

Media Arts and Technology

UC Santa Barbara

Date: Friday, May 4, 2007
Place: Buchanan 1930
Time: 2:00 pm — 3:00 pm


Abstract:

The Siren system is an open-source general-purpose software framework for music and sound composition, processing, performance, and analysis; it is a collection of about 375 classes written in Smalltalk-80. Siren and its predecessors have been exhaustively documented; see, e.g., the Proceedings of the 1987, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1994, and 2003 ICMCs (2007 submitted), several book chapters, and articles in Computer Music Journal (16.3) and Organised Sound (1.1). The current version of Siren (7.5) runs on VisualWorks Smalltalk (available for free for non-commercial use) and supports cross-platform streaming I/O via OpenSoundControl (OSC), MIDI, and multi-channel audio ports.

Siren is a programming framework and tool kit; the intended audience is Smalltalk developers, or users willing to learn Smalltalk in order to write their own applications. The built-in applications are meant as demonstrations of the use of the libraries. Siren is not a MIDI sequencer, nor a score notation editor, through both of these applications would be easy to implement with the Siren framework.

There are several elements to Siren:
• the Smoke music representation language (music magnitudes, events, event lists, generators, functions, and sounds);
• voices, schedulers and I/O drivers (real-time and file-based voices, sound, score file, OSC, and MIDI I/O);
• user interface components for musical applications (UI framework and widgets);
• several built-in applications (editors and browsers for Smoke objects); and
• external library interfaces for streaming I/O and DSP math (sound/ MIDI I/O, fast FFT, CSL & Loris sound analysis/resynthesis packages

This presentation will give a quick tour of the Smalltalk programming system (language, libraries, and tools), and then introduce Siren's various facilities for music description, synthesis, performance, and processing. The newest tools, such as the interfaces to CSL and
Loris, will be spotlighted.

STEPHEN T. POPE is a composer, software developer, and social and spiritual activist based in Santa Barbara, California. He is affiliated with the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE), in the Dept. of Music at UC Santa Barbara, and the Graduate Program in Media Arts and Technology (MAT). He is active as a software developer and consultant through FASTLab, Inc. His music and video compositions are released through HeavenEverywhere. Stephen is also a practising Quaker, an active conscientious objection counsellor, a trained Reiki practitioner and a facilitator in the Alternatives to Violence Program.