Bang

An Embedded Domain Specific Language for writing drum machine patterns in Haskell.

Bang interfaces with your system MIDI device in order to play drum compositions, directly written in and interpreted by the Haskell programming language.

Currently, Bang only supports OSX. Windows playback works, but is finnicky. In particular, if you interrupt a composition launched from a ghci interpreter session, the built-in MIDI synthesizer will complain about already being in use the next time you attempt to play something, until ghci is reloaded. This issue does not arise when playing songs from files. If you define a main function in an external file, and compile and run it, interrupting compositions should work fine.

Installing

Installation of the library is simple.

> cabal update
> cabal install Bang

On Windows (again, not recommended), You should be good to go at this point. If you see Using MIDI Device: Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth when playing your first composition, you're set. If this happens but nothing plays, please contact me.

On OSX, some additional setup is required to output MIDI sounds. First, you'll need to download and install SimpleSynth. Next, you'll need to set up a MIDI IAC driver. Open Audio MIDI Setup (in Applications -> Utilities) and press ⌘2 (or go Window -> Show MIDI Window). You should see a slightly greyed out IAC Driver icon. Double click it, then check the box labeled "Device is online." Launch SimpleSynth and set the MIDI Source to "IAC Driver Bus 1" (or whatever you named your IAC driver) using the drop-down box at the top of the window. Audio from Bang should now feed into and play through SimpleSynth.

Getting Started

Bang exports two main entry points for playing compositions, bang to play compositions once and stop, and bangR, to play compositions on repeat. In all of the following examples, bang can be replaced by bangR.

To play a single bass drum hit:

> :m + Bang
> bang bd

Sequential Composition

To play two compositions sequentially, use <> (from Data.Monoid):

> :m + Data.Monoid
> bang $ bd <> sn -- bass, then snare.

Rests

To add rests into compositions, use rest:

> bang $ bd <> rest (1/4) <> bd -- bass, quarter rest, bass.

Many special cases of rests reside in Bang.Interface.Base. These include qr (quarter rest), hr (half), er (eighth), wr (whole) and more.

Parallel Composition

To play two compositions in parallel, use ><:

> bang $ bd >< sn -- bass and snare at the same time.

Repetition

To play a composition multiple times in sequence, use #>:

> bang $ 4 #> bd -- play 4 bass drum hits in sequence

Changing Tempo

bang plays a composition at 120 BPM by default. To change the tempo, use !>, which expects a fraction as the first argument:

> bang $ (1/2) !> (bd <> sn) -- play at half speed

A number of special cases of tempo-setting functions such as double, quad, half, and triplets reside in Bang.Interface.Base.

Changing Duration

By default, each primitive note in Bang has duration 1/4. To set the duration for a composition, use ~~:

> bang $ 1 ~~ (bd <> bd) -- play two bass drum hits with a total duration of 1.

Polyrhythms

Composing polyrhythms can be done in three ways. The first, using ~=~:

-- play a 3/4 polyrhythm with bass drum triplets and snare quarter notes.
> bang $ (3, 3 #> bd) ~=~ (4, 4 #> sn)

The other two ways are by using ~= and =~. These are slightly more general than the above case, and can be used for more than just polyrhythms. a ~= b smashes (or elongates) b into the duration of a, while =~ does the same thing, but in the other direction. For example, the polyrhythm above can be more concisely represented like this:

> bang $ (3 #> bd) =~ (4 #> sn)

To play the same rhythm in 3/4 duration, just use the other operator:

> bang $ (3 #> bd) ~= (4 #> sn)

Slicing Compositions

To play only the first part of a composition, use takeDur or <<~. To chop off a section of the end of a composition, use dropDur or ~>>:

> bang $ (1/4) <<~ ( 2 #> (bd <> sn) ) -- Play only `bd`
> bang $ (1/4) ~>> ( 2 #> (bd <> sn) ) -- Play bd, sn, bd

Silencing

To instead silence parts of a composition, use hushFor (~@>) to silence from the beginning, or hushFrom (<@~) to silence from some point until the end of a composition:

> bang $ (1/4) ~@> ( 2 #> (bd <> sn) ) -- Play a quarter rest, then bd, sn, bd
> bang $ (1/4) <@~ ( 2 #> (bd <> sn) ) -- Play `bd`, then a 3/4 rest.

Duration Normalization

We can normalize a list of compositions to the same duration and play them sequentially using normalize or <!>:

-- play each composition sequentially with duration 1.
> bang $ 1 <!> [bd, 3 #> sn, 5 #> hc]

We can do the same, but play each in parallel using normalizeC (C for 'Concurrent') or >!<:

-- play each composition concurrently with duration 1.
> bang $ 1 >!< [bd, 3 #> sn, 5 #> hc]

Mapping Over Composition Lists

We can map an operator over a list of compositions using >>~:

-- Play each note in the list twice, sequentially.
> bang $ (2 #>) >>~ [sn, bd, hc]

Other Transformations

Reversal

reverseMusic does just what you'd expect:

> bang $ reverseMusic $ bd <> sn -- snare, then bass.

Mirrors

mirror plays a composition forward, then backward. mirrorR plays it backwards, then forwards:

> bang $ mirror  $ bd <> sn -- bd, sn, sn, bd
> bang $ mirrorR $ bd <> sn -- sn, bd, bd, sn

Cross

cross plays a composition both forward and backward at the same time:

> bang $ cross $ bd <> sn -- (bd & sn), (bd & sn)

Repeating

rep repeats a composition ad infinitum:

> bang $ rep bd -- bd, bd, bd, bd ...

Measures

m4 is a convenience constructor for 4-element compositions (useful for piecing together 4-element measures):

> bang $ m4 bd hc bd sn -- bd, hc, bd, sn

Note About Monoids

Compositions form two monoids: one under <> (sequential composition) and one under >< (parallel composition). To avoid wrapping everything in newtypes, the <> monoid is the 'real' one, and the >< one uses similar names to the "real" monoid names.

Of particular note are the "concat" functions. mconcat plays a list of compositions in sequence, while cconcat plays a list of compositions in parallel:

> bang $ mconcat [bd, sn, hc, sn] -- bd, sn, hc, sn in sequence
> bang $ cconcat [bd, sn, hc]     -- bd, sn, hc all at once 

Extras

All of the operators reside in Bang.Music.Operators, with most underlying implementations (and plain text functions) in Bang.Music.Transform.

All of the primitive sounds (such as bd, sn and hc are implemented in Bang.Interface.Drum. This includes all of the MIDI percussion sounds, with the more common ones having shortform and longform names. All of these can be used in Bang compositions.

Finally, the full documentation is available on Hackage.

An Extended Example

-- | The first few measures of 'Toxicity' by System of a Down.
toxicityIntro =
  let sh = sn >< hc -- snare and closed hi-hat combo
      bc = bd >< hc -- bass and closed hi-hat combo
      cd = bd >< cc -- bass and crash cymbal combo
  in bang $ 
     double $ -- play at double tempo
       bd <>
       ( double $ 
         mconcat [ -- concatenate into a single sequential composition
           mconcat [sh, bd, qr, bd, sh, qr, bd, qr, sh, qr]
         , mconcat [ 
             (2 #>) >>~ [sn, t1, t2] -- play each element of the list twice
           , double $ 4 #> sn
           , (2 #>) >>~ [sn, t1, t2] 
           , m4 cd qr hc sn -- groups of measures with 4 beats  
           , m4 hc bd sh qr
           , m4 hc sn bc qr
           , m4 bc qr hc sh
           , m4 hc bd sh qr
           , m4 bd qr sh qr 
           ] 
         ] )

Acknowlegements

A lot of inspiration and guidance on the implementation of Bang comes from the Haskell School of Music and Paul Hudak's very interesting paper. Tidal by Alex McLean is also notable as inspiration. The goal of Bang is to produce a small subset of these things that works well for something very specific: composing drum-only beats.