BuboQuark/docs/pattern.md

Pattern shortcuts

SuperCollider has a very large and powerful collection of Pattern classes. They allow you to create pretty much every musical pattern you can imagine but it comes with a cost: they are cumbersome to write and read. The question of patterns seems to be a divisive topic in the broader community. Some use them a lot, some do their absolute best to avoid them.

The difficulty of writing patterns live is a well known challenge. Many live coding frameworks have been created just to break free of the rigid pattern syntax used by SuperCollider. BuboQuark is not trying to replace the Pattern classes entirely because they are really nice. This would be a bit presumptuous and also counter-productive: there is so much you can do with patterns already!

I just bring a few shortcuts to make it easier to write and read patterns whenever possible. Once again, there is a strong reliance on arrays to do so. This is not the state of the art approach but it is a good compromise between simplicity and flexibility. The kind of shortcuts I'm creating here have been used in the community for a long time. Each person typically creates his own shortcuts.

Pdv to write melodies/rhythms

There is a little and rather unknown Quark called Pdv. This Quark brings a new method to parse a string into a pattern, inspired by the TidalCycles syntax. There are other Quarks doing just the same thing like Bacalao but they are a little bit difficult to use. They work inside of a larger framework that you have to adhere to, departing from the base syntax.

Pdv is super transparent. It just adds a new method to use on the deg: key of your patterns. Pdv will take care of turning that list into the dur and degree keys, facilitating the writing of rhythms and melodies. I have assocciated this method with the .p method of the string class. It means that you can use the following syntax to write patterns:

[
  "fmintro", i: "fm",
  // Look at the following line!
  deg: "0^4 ~^4 {0 5 7}^4 ~ -5^4 ~^4 {0 5 8 10}^4 ~".p,
  o: [4, 5], db: -20, attack: [0.1, 0.3].pwhite,
].pat.play;

Note that using pdv will override the degree/note and deg keys. You can use it or ignore it depending on what you have planned but it is a good thing to have it ready to be used :) You could write the whole documentation of Pdv on a napkin:

" "    - empty space separates beats/values
~      - rest
[]     - beat sub division or group
<>     - alternating values
{}     - chord values
^n     - stretch duration - where n is a float
!n     - repeat value - where n is an integer
$      - shuffle group of values
?n     - chance of value or rest - optional probability is specified with n as an integer 0-9
#(nnn) - choose one value from preceeding group of values, optional weights are specified within parens where n is an integer 0-9
|      - can be used as visual separator to help readability
,      - can be used as visual separator to help readability

Array shortcuts

These shortcuts are syntax sugar for turning a list into a pattern (e.g. [1, 2, 3].pseq). They work just like the regular Pattern type they correspond to. I could create a thousand of them but so far, I only cover the most common types.

• pseq(repeats=inf, offset=0): shortcut for Pseq
• pshuf(repeats=1): shortcut for Pshuf
• prand(repeats=inf): shortcut for Prand
• pxrand(repeats=inf): shortcut for Pxrand
• pwrand(weights, repeats=1): shortcut for Pwrand
• pwhite(repeats=inf): shortcut for Pwhite
• pseries(repeats=inf): shortcut for Pseries

Replacing all of them is probably not the best idea. The library is so vast that some Pattern classes are not encountered very often. Some are also quite specific with the type of arguments they require and pushing everything in an Array can hinder code completion / readability.

Euclidian rhythms

There is a Quark named Pborklund that implements euclidean rhythms to the SuperCollider pattern library. Do you see yourself typing Pbjorklund2(5, 8, inf) everytime you want to use it? I don't. I have created a shortcut for it: Eu(5, 8, inf). That's it. I don't have anything more to say about it.