Bleeperpreter

A simple language for generating audio from text

Table of Contents:

• Intro
• Quick Setup
• Workspace
• Syntax
• Making a new backend
• TODO

Intro

Bleeperpreter is an interpreter for a simple language that can be used to generate audio from text. The core of this project is a library with a string deserializer. One of the goals of this project is to make it easy to add new backends for the interpreter.

Quick Setup

• get Rust from rustup.rs
• clone this repo:

git clone https://github.com/p6nj/bleeperpreter.git
cd bleeperpreter

• cd into the Wave implementation:

cd bppt-wav

• build and run:

cargo run -- play json/poc.json # for the default example
cargo run -- try "sin(2*pi*f*t)" # to try a signal on the fly

Workspace

This project is a Rust workspace with the following members:

• bppt - the core library
• bppt-wav - a pure sound backend with WAV output

Each implementation has examples (./toml or ./json) and tests. The core library has a few tests as well. You can run all tests from the root of the project with:

cargo test

Syntax

The language is composed of notes (one letter each), rests (dots) and parametters (a special character followed by a number). Each implementation has a way of describing which notes are available and what their letter is in a "set". The score is where the notes and parametters are used to generate audio.

Parametters change the octave, length, and volume (or velocity) of notes. Length are in the time signature format: a 4 is a quarter note, a 1 is a whole note. The character associated with each parametter can change over time but you can view (or modify) the current setup in bppt/src/structure/de/atoms.rs from line 17. Some parametters don't take any arguments, like the "octave increase" character and other short parametter modifiers. You can also loop a part by putting it in loop delimiters and adding a number after the opening delimiter, or make it a tuplet using the tuplet delimiter.

Making a new backend

Would you like to use this music language for something else ? Use the Notes object. It contains the set and the score, but it also has a flat_iter method to flatten tuples and loops so you don't have to deal with recursivity. Notes (a special Atom) will take the index of their letter in the set and a tuple field will tell you the order of the tuple it's in (a 1 means it's a tuple of one note, i.e. no tuple).

Put the Notes in a serde-compatible deserializable structure, call your favorite deserializer (serde_json, basic-toml...) and build your own way of rendering notes with the flat_iter function.

TODO

• add documentation
• publish to crates.io
• make a README for both crates
• add better error reporting
• switch bppt-wav file input type to toml