From Lyon’s Grame center, today there’s a free online workshop on patching and coding your own synths, including working with tools like the Faust DSP environment (even on the Web), VCV Rack, Daisy Eurorack, Arduino, Teensy, and more.
The workshop’s been on since 9:15 AM Lyon local time, but you can rewind time on the YouTube live stream. And afternoon European time has some particularly excited additions yet to come. That includes coding your own VCV Rack modules in Faust, embedding your own code in a hardware module in Eurorack (Daisy), and even working graphically to patch in Faust in a browser with JSPatcher.
Faust is a functional language for synthesis and audio effects, also from Grame – https://faust.grame.fr
The Google Meet is real-time only and required registration, but the YouTube feed you can tune in anywhere or watch on-demand. Plus, bonus – Romain has given us a little recipe from Lyon. Going to see if I can get that for us.
Live stream:
I’m actually adding notes as we go…
A recorded talk covering Faust DSP on embedded with Arduino IDE – via the ultra-inexpensive, ultra-mobile Teensy platform:
We walk you through building a simple prototype poly synth with Faust DSP, Arduino, Teensy 4.0 and Modular. We are live streaming our talk for the Programmable Audio Workshop PAW 2020 for GRAME Lyon. So watch us gleefully fumble our way through all the neccessary components, and hang out with us in chat while we guide you through our code.
Teensy USB Development Board
Arduino IDE
Mutable Instruments Breadboard Friends
Make your own Gramophone as part of the Amstramgrame project, which uses DIY hardware to teach STEAM / code and engineering.
Basically, you get a mobile, self-contained instrument you can program with the powerful Faust environment.
https://github.com/amstramgrame/amstramgrame/blob/master/web/en/mkdocs/docs/gramophone/making.md
https://www.amstramgrame.fr/en/gramophone/making/
Components:
https://www.amstramgrame.fr/en/gramophone/making/#gramophone-components-list
Here’s that how-to video:
Patching Faust in the browser:
Presentation: Design Faust DSP with a Web-based Graph Editor
https://github.com/fr0stbyter/jspatcher
Examples opening directly in the online patcher: https://fr0stbyter.github.io/jspatcher/dist/?projectZip=../examples/paw.zip
Faust vs. VCV Rack
Make your own Eurorack code with Daisy
This pluck echo patch is great, too – Karplus-Strong techno lives!
https://github.com/electro-smith/DaisyExamples/blob/master/patch/PluckEcho/PluckEcho.cpp
If you want to combine Daisy and Faust, check: https://github.com/grame-cncm/faust/tree/daisy/architecture/daisy
Plus they’re having great luck with Microsoft Visual Studio Code which, despite the name, actually runs on macOS and Linux as well as Windows and is more like a lightweight code editor. (Hey, there is even an ARM64 version for macOS and Windows. I love that Apple silicon is finally accelerating ARM-native Windows software, too.)
Faust links:
Faust DSP IDE
Faust DSP Reference
And more cool extras:
For control, using MCP controllers: https://github.com/agraef/faust-mcp
Some examples with the lovely bela platform: https://faustdoc.grame.fr/examples/bela/
Unrelated to Faust, this morning also had an appearance by a very nice Euclidean Max for Live device: https://maxforlive.com/library/device.php?id=6719
And a bonus link on working with FPGAs: https://fast.grame.fr