[chuck-users] generating a wav|mp3 unattended via cron

[Kassen]

On 1/15/07, Wegwerf Adresse <w3gw3rfadr3553 at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello list,
>
> my first posting, I am not so much a musician as rather interested in hoe
> our digital technology advances. ChucK caught my attention with its
> interesting mixture between programming and creativity.



Hi, Chris, you wouldn't be Dutch by any chance? (I noticed the "hoe"
above...)



> I would like to generate this piece on a soundcard-less server, preferably
> without my intervention (via cron).


Sounds like a good plan.


I found the '--silent' option to suppress audio output and a file
> rec-auto.ck to record into a wav file.



Exelent, you are nearly there already.


But that way the recording-to-file doesn't stop, it keep growing bigger.
> I also could not find anything in the docs.


Right. So; what we need is something to stop the recording to the file and
indeed preferably something to stop chuck completely. What you could do is
start chuck in a non-looped way ("chuck --silent filename.ck record.ck"
would do). Now if something would remove all shreds from the VM chuck would
shut-down and in this process should close the recorded file.

So if your record.ck would machine.add() a shred who's sole purpose would be
to wait for -say- ten minutes (of ChucK time), then remove all shreds (and
itself at the end too) then you'd be in business.

Now it gets a bit hard because it's not always obvious what the ID of the
last shred is and we need a ID to remove shreds. If for your sounds you can
easily establish the ID of the highest shred I'd recommend something like
this;

10::minute => now;
//kill all lower id's then self
for(0 => n; n< me.id(); n++) Machine.remove(n);
//then everything higher
for( (me.id() + 1) => n; n < highest_shred_id; n++) Machine.remove(n);
//somebody has to turn the light out...
m.exit();

Don't spork this as a function; if you do it will be killed when the parent
that sporked it is killed.

When you don't know the  ID of the highest shred that's not a child (killing
parents kills their childeren) then it gets a bit harder. what you could try
is Std.system() which send a request to the OS. "Std.system( chuck --kill)"
should make chuck request that the system kill it. Theoretically. I think I
saw some weird behaviour coming from Std.system and IMHO "Std.system( chuck
--kill)" is pushing the envelope of what's sensible to do (but it's kinda
fun because of that).

So what is a good, reliable way to create music files?



I believe that official policy is still that ChucK shouldn't be used in
anything aplication that requiers reliability, including but not limited to
nuclear reactor management, public performance and especially alarm-clocks.


> I want my computer to create a file every other week and use it as an
> alarm clock in the morning. ;)


I recommend making sure your algorithems *always* generate a sound. Silence
is a sound too, or so I was told, but silence isn't a alarm-clock. ;-)


Kas.
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