[PD] MOD Trackers (was Pd to CV for a Moog) (OT)

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2006, padawan12 wrote:

> Although Miller and others talk about Pd as a 'language', always with 
> quote marks,

I don't use the quotemarks - I mean, not those that suppose some kind of 
illegitimacy. In a wide meaning of the word, a language doesn't have to be 
something verbal or written with letters. Though the etymology points back 
to a part of the mouth, most would consider the phrase "written language" 
to not be a contradiction of terms. Here I used quotemarks only as 
delimiters of a phrase (like I usually do anyway), and not to belittle the 
phrase.

> it doesn't have that syntactic structure

What's missing in it, in order to have a syntax?

> or computational causality either.

How can Pd execute a patch then?

I don't see a lack of causality.

> If I remember right a tracker file stores the samples as well as the 
> timing sequences so they'd have to be read into arrays. (?)

Conceptually you need a 1-D array for the order, a 3-D array of structs 
for the patterns (pattern#,row,channel), and one array per sample. I say 
conceptually because the actual layout could be different if it makes 
things any easier.

For Impulse Tracker files, the 3-D array is to be replaced by a sequence 
of 2-D arrays because each pattern may have a different number of rows; 
and also there's the concept of instrument which inserts itself between 
the concepts of pattern and sample.

IIRC.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada