Lichen

Lichen is an experimental music/dsp livecoding environement. It is under heavy construction right now so everything is subject to change at anytime.

description

Lichen is a symbiotic organism. DSP code in cpp is made composable at runtime by lua scripts. Right now, there is a plugin for the micro text editor that lets you run lichen and send it scripts to run. Lichen then turns that script into a signal that is played on your soundcard.

vision

musical instrument

I hope Lichen will be a way first and formost to make music, allowing the artist to think about sound and synthesis in the same language that they think about rythm, form, and melody. I also want the artist to be able to manipulate time direcly as a means of expressing music.

dsp playground

I also hope that it can separate concerns well enough to have a DSP library that can be used in a variety of platforms, including low power and/or embedded. Lichen will hopefully be a tool that can be used to quickly prototype ideas for instruments which can then be translated to efficient cpp code.

getting started

1. follow build and install instructions below.
2. install the text editor, micro
3. install the micro-lichen plugin
4. open micro and save a new file containing return osc(440.0)
5. press Alt-Shift-. to send the code to lichen.
6. you should hear a sine tone playing an A natural.

build

1. install libsoundio and dev headers (on ubuntu this is on apt)
2. git submodule update --init to get sol3 for lua scripting
3. cmake .
4. make

test

1. cmake .
2. make test

install

1. if ubuntu linux run make install
2. if any other platform copy lichen from bin to where your OS stores installed programs (ex. /usr/bin on my machine.)