The Modalys Workspace

The Modalys Workspace is the environment in which Objects, Accesses, Connections and Controllers are created. The workspace contains other important tools, such as those for getting audio in and out of the Modalys environment, running synthesis (when not using Modalys in a real-time environment such as Max/MSP), and getting and setting other Modalys settings and options.

The most important tools in this category are probably the “make-point-output” and “make-point-input” functions. The former lets you acquire vibrations from an access in order to either output it in real-time, play it after non-real-time calculation or save it to disk as a sound file. The latter lets you send vibrations to an access via an input sound file or real-time input.

Other workspace options include setting the sampling rate and bits of precision for the calculation, setting the number of input and output channels (although this is by default done automatically depending on the number of point-inputs and point-outputs), getting information from objects, accesses and connections within the workspace, setting the verbosity of messages Modalys reports back to the user, and clearing the Modalys workspace to a default (empty) state.

The following are the basic and general-purpose workspace commands:

• New
• Run Synthesis
• Play
• Set Message Level
• Set Precision
• Set Angle Mode
• Get Version
• Stop
• Quit

The following are commands relating to sound generation, input and output:

• Point Output
• Point Input
• Save AIFF FIle
• Save Floating-Point File
• Set Sample Rate
• Set Bit Depth
• Set Number of Channels

The following commands are specific to running Modalys in real-time:

• Run in Real-Time
• Listen to IP Port

The Get Info command is a basic function with a variety of commands that allow you to retrieve a vast amount of information about all sorts of things in the workspace. The commands themselves do not require their own individual pages, however, as they can each be explained simply. We have divided the get-info command up into separate sections with items grouped according to category (object, access, connection, controller, workspace). The workspace-related commands are explained here, alongside other workspace-related information-obtaining commands.

• Get Info
• Get Angle Mode

The following commands can be used to plot controller data to a graph in an external window. This can be useful to debug problematic syntheses, in addition to helping visualize parameters and their results. (As an example, all of the graphs in the controllers section were plotted using this feature.)

• Make Plot
• Plot Value
• Plot

The following are commands relating to Modalys file input and output:

• Load Modalys Script
• Load Component
• Save Mlys Script

These are other useful tools that are integrated into the environment:

• MIDI to Frequency
• Frequency to MIDI