SuperCollider Tutorial

Investigating Oscillators

• Open SuperCollider.
• Boot BOTH servers.
• Choose Menu "Help/SuperCollider Help". A new window should appear. Scroll down until you find the heading overview.
• Find the overview for [UGens] (Unit Generators). Click on the word and a new window headed 'UGens Help' should appear.
• Scroll down until you find the heading oscillators.
• Select one - that is, select the entire word, for instance, Blip.
• Choose the menu item Help/SuperCollider Help
• A new window should appear headed Blip - band limited impulse oscillator
• At the bottom of the window, you'll see the following hieroglyphics:
  
  { Blip.ar(XLine.kr(20000,200,6),100,0.2) }.play;
• Select the entire line: either select manually with the mouse, or triple-click to the left of the first brace.
• Press the Enter key. NB this is NOT the return key!
• You should hear a sound!
• In order to get the sound to stop, use the key-combination, command-. (that is the command key (apple key) and the full-stop or period key).
• Try this with a number of other opcodes (lines of code). While you probably won't understand much to begin with, read through the opcodes to get a feel for their format.