[chuck-users] Creating Traditional Instrument Sounds Using OSC (ChucK vs. SuperCollider)...

[DANIEL MAGNUSZEWSKI]

All,

I hope this is not off topic :-)

I have been playing with SuperCollider for a week or two since reading
an article on creating live music with Perl code
(http://toplap.org/index.php/Hacking_perl_in_nightclubs). Note - I am
a
programmer (mainly Perl), but quite a newbie with live coding and I
know little to nothing
about writing ChucK/sclang code. 

Essentially, there is an editor called feedback.pl
(http://cpan.org/authors/id/Y/YA/YAXU/perl-music-article/examples/feedback-0.1.pl)
that allows you to write Perl code that will create OSC messages that
will be sent to SuperCollider. SuperCollider is running the following
code
(http://cpan.org/authors/id/Y/YA/YAXU/perl-music-article/examples/simple.sc)
that, from my understanding, the simple.sc script listens for OSC
messages, of which I can send from feedback.pl using built in methods
'play' and 'trigger'. 

For Example (Perl Code): 

sub bang 
{
     my $self = shift;
     # play a "middle c" note every fourth bang
     $self->play({num => 60})
     if $self->{bangs} % 4 == 0;
}

I currently have this working, and I can make some pretty cool
"digital" sounding music. What I would like to be able to have these
sounds be conventional instrument sounds (Bass, Drums, Guitar,
Trumpet,
Piano, etc). Is there a way to achieve this through ChucK, or do
I need to use a software synth like fluid-synth? I also want to be
able
to code, execute, and modify this live.

Is anyone else doing this? Thoughts?

-Dan