The shape of astrid’s python renderer changed a fair bit today. Until this morning the python renderer and a full python interpreter was embedded inside the main astrid program. Working on wrapping the new astrid_instrument_start and friends today I realized since I’m opening a queue to send messages to the python interpreter anyway, the renderer doesn’t really need to be running inside an embedded environment. I moved the cyrenderer module into pippi.renderer (which might just become astrid eventually since that’s what it wraps) and changed the way instrument scripts work slightly so that they can be run standalone as normal python scripts.

For example here’s the simple.py script from yesterday modified in the new style:

from pippi import dsp, oscs, renderer

def play(ctx):
    ctx.log('Rendering simple tone')
    yield oscs.SineOsc(freq=330, amp=0.5).play(1).env('pluckout')

# This is the new thing:
if __name__ == '__main__':
    renderer.run_forever('simple', __file__)

The renderer was already loading the script as a module, collecting the play methods and executing them on demand, so adding a single line to the python main routine doesn’t interfere with live-reloading at all, and lets the script initialize itself in the background, load itself as a module and wait for messages instead of relying on a special console.py runner like I’ve been doing for ages.

In the process I decided that the old astrid dac, adc, seq, and renderer programs have run their course. They all live on embedded inside the astrid_start_instrument routine which starts the jack thread, the message listener thread and the sequencer thread – all of which are started with renderer.run_forever from the python script.

I haven’t yet figured out how to fit the new linenoise console into python instruments but I’d like them to feel the same as the C instruments and drop into an astrid console when started…