Nyquist is a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

for

sound synthesis A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and f ...

and analysis based on the

Lisp programming language Lisp (historically LISP) is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1960, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language still in common u ...

. It is an extension of the

XLISP XLISP is a family of Lisp (programming language), Lisp implementations written by David Betz and first released in 1983. The first version was a Lisp with object-oriented programming, object-oriented extensions for computers with limited power. Th ...

dialect of Lisp, and is named after

Harry Nyquist Harry Nyquist (, ; February 7, 1889 – April 4, 1976) was a Swedish-American physicist and electronic engineer who made important contributions to communication theory. Personal life Nyquist was born in the village Nilsby of the parish Stora Ki ...

. With Nyquist, the programmer designs musical instruments by combining functions, and can call upon these instruments and generate a sound just by typing a simple expression. The programmer can combine simple expressions into complex ones to create a whole composition, and can also generate various other kinds of musical and non-musical sounds. The Nyquist interpreter can read and write sound files, MIDI files, and

Adagio Adagio (Italian for 'slowly', ) may refer to: Music * Adagio, a tempo marking, indicating that music is to be played slowly, or a composition intended to be played in this manner * Adagio (band), a French progressive metal band Albums * ''Adagi ...

text-based music score files. On many platforms, it can also produce direct audio output in real time. The Nyquist programming language can also be used to write plug-in effects for the Audacity digital audio editor. One notable difference between Nyquist and more traditional MUSIC-N languages is that Nyquist does not segregate synthesis functions (see

unit generator Unit generators (or ''ugens'') are the basic formal units in many MUSIC-N-style computer music programming languages. They are sometimes called opcodes (particularly in Csound), though this expression is not accurate in that these are not machine ...

) from "scoring" functions. For example

Csound Csound is a domain-specific computer programming language for audio programming. It is called Csound because it is written in C, as opposed to some of its predecessors. It is free software, available under the LGPL-2.1-or-later. Csound was o ...

is actually two languages, one for creating "orchestras" the other for writing "scores". With Nyquist these two domains are combined. Nyquist runs under

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and other

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

environments,

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

, and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. The Nyquist programming language and interpreter were written by Roger Dannenberg at Carnegie Mellon University, with support from

Yamaha Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate with a very wide range of products and services. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world's largest musical instrument manufacturing company. The former motorcycle divi ...

and IBM.

References

External links

Computer Music Project
at Carnegie Mellon, home of the Nyquist interpreter {{Lisp Audio programming languages Software synthesizers Carnegie Mellon University