Csndsugui

csndsugui is a toolkit for Csound-sugar Activity development

Writing activities using csndsugui

In general, Activities are built according to the basic procedures outlined in Activity tutorial.

Basics

• Import the relevant modules

import csndsugui
from sugar.activity import activity

• Create an empty activity class such as

class MyCsoundActivity(activity.Activity):
  def __init__(self, handle):
    activity.Activity.__init__(self, handle) 

• Instantiate a CsoundGUI object, passing the activity instance as an argument:

  win = csndsugui.CsoundGUI(self)

• Set and compile Csound code:

  win.CSD("mycode.csd")

It is CRUCIAL that Csound compiles successfully before the widgets below are created. Otherwise they will not be assigned channels in the software bus and thus will not communicate with Csound. This method returns 0 if successful.

Adding Widgets

Use boxes to format and contain widgets, child boxes can be contained within parent boxes. The top-level box does not have any parents.

   box = win.box()

See the documentation on PyGTK on how boxes are used to set the formatting. CsoundGUI will take care of all the packing for you. You can then add widgets to it, ie:

   win.button(box,"oscil")
   win.slider(1.0,0.25,4.0,90,250,box,"pitch", linear=False) 

Making the connections

In your Csound code, you can retrieve the value of each of the controls in channels of the software bus:

   kosc  chnget "oscil"   
   kpit  chnget "pitch"

Channel names will be linked to widget labels ("oscil" and "pitch" in the example above) Most widgets will work within the principles outlined above. Important exceptions are:

• Message button:

 mbutton(self,box,mess,title="")

where mess is a RT score event or message to be sent to Csound (in most cases an i-statement, but f-statements are also possibilities).

• Callback button:

 cbbutton(self,box,callback,title="")

where callback is a Python function that will be invoked when the button is clicked.

Special button names: "play", "pause" and "reset". These are assigned special messages that are not captured by the software bus. Instead, they can control Csound performance, starting, pausing and resetting Csound performance (they are linked to CsoundGUI.play(), CsoundGUI.pause() and CsoundGUI.reset() methods.)

A complete example

Here is a complete Activity script of a simple csndsugui example. It uses banks of buttons and sliders:

File: WavesActivity.py

import csndsugui from sugar.activity import activity class Waves(activity.Activity): def __init__(self, handle): activity.Activity.__init__(self, handle) # colours red = (0xFFFF,0,0) bg = (0xF000, 0xFF00, 0xFFFF) win = csndsugui.CsoundGUI(self,bg) win.csd("waves.csd") txt = win.text("Making Waves") sfbox = win.box(False) bfbox = win.box(False) sbox = win.framebox("frequencies", False, sfbox, red, 40) bbox = win.framebox("oscillators", False, bfbox, red, 40) win.buttonbank(8,bbox) win.spin(0,0,10,0.5,1,bbox,0, "main_volume") win.vsliderbank(8,400.0,400.0,500.0,80,200,sbox) win.play()

The Csound code that goes with it is shown below. It is based on two instruments: instr 1 triggers instances (up to 8) of instr 2, which produces the sound. Instances are trigger on/off depending on button values (0 =not clicked, 1 = clicked):

File: waves.csd

<CsoundSynthesizer> <CsOptions> -odac -B2048 -b1024 -d </CsOptions> <CsInstruments> /* button channels */ gkb1 chnexport "B1", 1 gkb2 chnexport "B2", 1 gkb3 chnexport "B3", 1 gkb4 chnexport "B4", 1 gkb5 chnexport "B5", 1 gkb6 chnexport "B6", 1 gkb7 chnexport "B7", 1 gkb8 chnexport "B8", 1 /* this instrument just triggers instr 2 depending on the status of buttons B1-B8 */ instr 1 k1 init 1 k2 init 1 k3 init 1 k4 init 1 k5 init 1 k6 init 1 k7 init 1 k8 init 1 if gkb1 == 1 then if k1 == 1 then event "i", 11.1, 0, -1, 1 k1=0 endif else if k1 == 0 then event "i", -11.1, 0, -1,1 k1=1 endif endif if gkb2 == 1 then if k2 == 1 then event "i", 11.2, 0, -1, 2 k2=0 endif else if k2 == 0 then event "i", -11.2, 0, -1, 2 k2=1 endif endif if gkb3 == 1 then if k3 == 1 then event "i", 11.3, 0, -1, 3 k3=0 endif else if k3 == 0 then event "i", -11.3, 0, -1, 3 k3=1 endif endif if gkb4 == 1 then if k4 == 1 then event "i", 11.4, 0, -1, 4 k4=0 endif else if k4 == 0 then event "i", -11.4, 0, -1, 4 k4=1 endif endif if gkb5 == 1 then if k5 == 1 then event "i", 11.5, 0, -1, 5 k5=0 endif else if k5 == 0 then event "i", -11.5, 0, -1, 5 k5=1 endif endif if gkb6 == 1 then if k6 == 1 then event "i", 11.6, 0, -1, 6 k6=0 endif else if k6 == 0 then event "i", -11.6, 0, -1, 6 k6=1 endif endif if gkb7 == 1 then if k7 == 1 then event "i", 11.7, 0, -1, 7 k7=0 endif else if k7 == 0 then event "i", -11.7, 0, -1, 7 k7=1 endif endif if gkb8 == 1 then if k8 == 1 then event "i", 11.8, 0, -1, 8 k8=0 endif else if k8 == 0 then event "i", -11.8, 0, -1, 8 k8=1 endif endif endin /* This is the synthesis instrument */ instr 11 /* This concatenates the instance number (p4) and the slider number */ S1 sprintf "S%d", p4 /* This takes in control from sliders S1-S8 */ k1 chnget S1 /* This takes in the main volume control */ k2 chnget "main_volume" /* smoothing the volume control */ kv tonek k2/10, 10 /* amplitude envelope */ ka linenr 2000*kv,0.1,0.1,0.05 /* oscillator */ a1 oscili ka, k1, 1 out a1 endin </CsInstruments> <CsScore> f1 0 1024 10 1 0.5 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.18 0.15 0.13 0.11 0.1 0.09 i1 0 3600 </CsScore> </CsoundSynthesizer>

Further help and where to get it

On-line help can be obtained by using PyDoc. See also examples in the csndsugui repository [1] where you can also get the latest code and a PyDoc-generated HTML reference file.