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Introduction

This tutorial provides a gentle introduction to working with Stella, Common Music's terminal-based music composition editor. Stella is terminal-based (non-graphic) so that it can run in all ports of Common Music. A graphic interface, called Capella, currently runs only on the Macintosh.

Tutorial Examples

Examples are printed in Courier font. User input is indicated by Courier Bold. The special mark <cr> means to press the Return key with an empty line of input.

In order to remain as general as possible, most of the examples in this tutorial involve MIDI and the midi-note class of object. However, the majority of examples could also be performed using different note classes in conjunction with some other output syntax: CSound, MusicKit, Common Lisp Music (CLM), Common Music Notation (CMN), CMusic, RT, and SGIMix.

Tutorial Object Classes

This tutorial discusses or briefly mentions the following object classes. See the Appendix for more information.
algorithm    An object that creates musical data via a program.
container    An object that contains other objects.
generator    An object that is both an algorithm and a thread.
heap         A container that access sub-objects in random order.
merge        A container that accesses sub-objects in parallel.
midi-note    A note that outputs MIDI on/off pairs.
note         An object that produces sound of some sort.
rest         An object that increments time but is silent.
object       A unit of structure, sometimes called an instance.
thread       A container that access sub-objects in sequential order.
This graph shows the relationships between object classes discussed in the tutorial:
                   Object
                  /      \
          Container       Element
         /    |   \           /  \
     Merge Thread Algorithm Rest Note
           /    \  /            / |  \
         Heap Generator       Fm CMN Midi-Note

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