= Create reactive music scenes with the RjDj composer pack =

July 24th, 2009

http://more.rjdj.me/2009/07/24/composerpack/

For some time now the RjDj team has been hard at work creating a library of tools to help everyone create scenes for RjDj (i.e. Pd patch bundles). These have been available for a while, as RjLib, from the RjDj website and wiki. However we have now consolidated these tools, in addition to some others, into the RjDj composer pack.

It's available for download now here : http://trac.rjdj.me/wiki/ComposersPack

The RjDj composer pack is a set of tools designed to help at all stages of the scene creation process. It contains a series of folders:

1. Example Scenes - This is a series of examples for RjDj to get you inspired.

2. Scene Template - This is a blank template for you to use to create scenes. It contains temporary images in the correct size and also contains the "rj" library in a subfolder. The rj library contains a large number of Pure Data abstractions (vanilla!) we have developed which you can use whilst creating your scenes. It features many types of tools you would find in conventional music making, as well as many you certainly wouldn't!

3. Rjutils - This folder contains a number of Pure Data tools for working with scenes. They are useful for testing scenes whilst on your computer.

4. Pd - This folder contains some essential custom Pd objects that are not part of the usual Pd installations. You should add these to the Pd installation on your computer (i.e. copy them to the 'extra' directory or somewhere else in you Pd search path), but don't put these into your Scene directory, as the RjDj mobile app includes them already.

6. Rjz server - This is a tool that lets you test your scene on your iPhone or iPod Touch without jail-breaking it.

7. Doc - In this folder we are delighted to include, with kind permission from Andy Farnell and his publisher, an excerpt from his book "Designing Sound" which is an excellent introduction to Pure Data.

Eventually we hope to incorporate a distribution of Pure Data within the Composer Pack. In the meantime, please download Pd for your platform here : http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html rsp. http://puredata.info/downloads (don't use Pd-extended, get the 'vanilla' versions on the bottom of the latter page.)

We are going to be continually updating this pack with new tools and extended documentation and we have some very exciting things in the pipeline for the composer community.

To find out more about creating reactive music scenes and RjDj, check out our wiki at http://trac.rjdj.me