Introduction to CLM

Lecture Slides

Some pointers...

A pretty good and short introduction to some Lisp concepts.

The on-line clm distribution (source code, examples and so on...

The on-line "CLM Manual".

The on-line "snd Manual".

Emacs cheat sheet

the most commonly used commands

References materials

getting started, reference card, the complete manual in html and more...

XEmacs Home Page

the official home of the xemacs editor...

To do...

Read the Simp Dissection Tutorial and dive into an anatomically correct view of the entrails of our basic example clm instrument. This is just a start and quite dense reading but worth it (I hope). It will introduce a lot of lisp concepts you'll find useful in understanding, modifying and creating clm instruments.

Login into a linux workstation and create some sound using clm. Learn the basic commands of the xemacs editor and the compilation sequence in lisp so that you are comfortable with the whole process.

In more detail:

• login into a linux machine.
• try out some programs (you can start them from the "START" menu in the taskbar or by typing the command name into the unix command line).
  • "netscape &" to start netscape or mozilla to start mozilla (you'll need it to browse through the course web page and the clm and snd manuals)
  • "pine" if you want to read email
  • "xemacs &" to start the xemacs editor
• once you have xemacs running start a common lisp process by typing "ctrl-x" "l". Check out the cheat sheet for the most frequently used xemacs commands. You can also access most of the commands from the xemacs menus, but it is a slower alternative.
• evaluate some simple lisp expression to check that lisp is working (for example type "(+ 1 2 3)" and then press "enter", lisp should respond by printing a "6" and then a new prompt... if it answers "7" or "45" or "2.1" you're in big trouble :-)
• create a file in your home directory named "simp.ins" (to create an empty file type "ctrl-x" "ctrl-f" and then enter the name of the new file) and paste in the example instrument code. The source code for "simp.ins" is included in text form in the lecture slides web page, highlight it with the mouse to copy it to the buffer, then move to the xemacs window and paste it in... on three button mice the center button pastes, on two button mice you'll need to press both buttons at the same time to paste (of course you cannot press both buttons at exactly the same time... what I do is to "arpegiate" the double press starting with the left button). Of course you have to save the file so that it goes to disk. To do that type "ctrl-x" "ctrl-s".
• compile and load the instrument (type ":cl simp.ins" in the lisp interpreter window). An instrument must be compiled. You cannot just type or paste the instrument source code directly into the lisp interpreter.
• use "with-sound" to make it _do_ something (see the examples in the lecture slides).
• go to a unix terminal and start "snd" (the sound editor) by typing "snd &" and open "/zap/test.snd", the soundfile you just generated
• move around in the editor and explore the soundfile
• if you managed to get through to here you're fine :-)

Here are the files I created while doing the tutorial this morning... the only ones of interest are the ones ending in ".lisp" and ".ins".

©1997-2001 Fernando Lopez-Lezcano. All Rights Reserved. nando@ccrma.stanford.edu