AC Toolbox

AC Toolbox is a stand-alone software package for algorithmic composition developed by Paul Berg. It was implemented in the Lisp programming language. It has numerous generators, transformers, and tools, and can be extended by the user. It is well-documented and has plenty of examples.

AC Toolbox can generate fractional MIDI values playable by the QuickTime synthesizer and via a Capybara or Pacarana (i.e., the hardware units of the Kyma sound design system). It is possible to send MIDI data to an external device via CoreMIDI, and to export MIDI data to a file; however, in both cases it rounds off the MIDI values to whole numbers.

I find the AC Toolbox useful for quickly prototyping algorithmic processes. I also find it useful for generating Csound scores. For example:

Will yield a score that is something like this:

i1 0.1916 2.7399 38 1
i1 3.0699 2.0392 49 2
i1 3.6051 2.9973 45 1
i1 6.2635 1.8834 39 0.5000
i1 10.1440 1.9321 42 0.5000
i1 16.2516 2.5831 46 1
i1 18.0588 1.1249 58 0.5000
i1 29.5553 2.7742 34 0.5000
i1 36.8098 1.6393 60 1
i1 38.0213 2.6638 61 2
i1 38.1205 1.6750 48 0.5000
i1 42.5817 1.2653 39 1
i1 43.8424 1.9782 55 1
i1 45.2315 1.7599 45 1
i1 45.8118 1.7012 57 1
i1 47.4830 1.6004 51 2
i1 48.4143 2.9806 54 2
i1 50.6039 1.1635 49 0.5000
i1 54.1167 1.6529 41 2
i1 58.9923 1.8283 50 2

See the AC Toolbox documentation for additional functionality and other compatible software packages.