Sonic Pi Autocomplete

Atom + Sonic Pi Integration with Ultra Cow Powers!!!

This plugin allows remote controlling Sonic Pi via Atom.

Sonic Pi is fun to play with, but its built-in editor relies a lot on ctrl-i to get real stuff done. With this plugin, you can livecode without having to worry about nitty things like which parameters can you slide or control, or what are the currently available parameters for all synths, fx, samples, and functions, or whether 1 stood for linear slide_shape for one parameter, or saw mod_wave for another.

Usage

Start up Sonic Pi or the Sonic Pi server (over UDP), and get live coding in Atom!

Note that the support for executing huge files with the Play Huge File command, will only work with Sonic Pi 2.11 excluding commit https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi/commit/16a55e7657ea5d457c70e7594adcdcbb2b9e1ccd (meaning you'll have to compile it from source though, good luck!)

Default Key Bindings

Key Binding	Action	Description
alt-r	sonic-pi-autocomplete:play-file	Sends content of the currently open buffer to Sonic Pi for instant playback
ctrl-alt-r	sonic-pi-autocomplete:play-selection	Sends currently selected text to Sonic Pi for instant playback
alt-shift-r	sonic-pi-autocomplete:stop	Tells Sonic Pi to stop all playback
unbinded	sonic-pi-autocomplete:play-huge-file	Plays a large file that can't be sent over a single OSC message

Get Started

Basic Usage

Try typing

play :c4,

Now type adsr, and hit enter to use the snippet. Use tab and shift-tab to jump between the attack, decay, sustain and release values. Change them if you want!

Now key in amp: 0.5, or some other slidable parameter. You'll know if it's slidable if there's something on the right saying 'Slide Syn. Pms.' (Sliding Synth Parameters).

Now key in slideshape, hit enter, and bam! There will now be amp_slide and amp_slide_shape parameters

Key in the value for amp_slide, and amp_slide_shape... oh wait... was 1 a linear slide or a stepped slide?

Who cares! Just type in linear, cubic, or whatever you want, hit enter and you should have something like this:

play :c4, attack: 0.01, decay: 0, sustain: 1, release: 0.1, amp: 0.5, amp_slide: 1, amp_slide_shape: 1

Add x = in front to get something like this: x = play :c4, attack: 0.01, ....

Try typing control on a new line, you should be able to see x as a :beep synth instance. Now you'll be able to see what parameters you can control or slide for :beep.

This works for all synths, the most recent use_synth available in the current scope will determine the synth played. This also works if you use x = synth :tb303, :c4, attack: 0.01 or whatever function that returns a synth instance.

Parsing directives

Aliasing #@

control

Sometimes, you may want to use control a lot, and you end up defining a helper function like this:

def c(*args)
  control *args
end

Now if you want to alias this shortened c function with the original control function, you can create a comment on a new line that goes like this:

#@ control c

And now whenever you are in scope of the alias comment, you will be able to get autocompletion for c just as you would in control

play

Here's another aliasing directive that can come in handy: #@ play <alias_name> <optional: parameter index to start suggestions> <optional: synth_used>

This will let you control at which parameter of the aliased alias_name function will autocompletions for the synth parameters appear for either the current synth, (or synth_used, if provided). It doesn't have to be for the play command, as demonstrated in the example below:

drone = synth :dark_ambience, :c2, sustain: 56, release: 8

#@ play ctldrone 0 :dark_ambience
define :ctldrone do |*args|
  control drone, *args
end
sleep 4
ctldrone note: :eb2

Note instances

It's also possible to alias identifiers with instances of synths by using #@ :synthname identifier

Here's an example:

define :rndplay do
  return play rand * 120
end

use_synth #$

In the same way, if you have a function that changes synths, but the use_synth is not in scope, you can use #$ :synthname like this:

define :waw do
  use_synth :tb303
end

waw
#$ :tb303
play :c4, cutoff: 80, cutoff_min: 60

to get autocompletions for the tb303 synth.

---

Full list of autocomplete features:

Functions, Names and Parameters:

• All Synth symbols
• All FX symbols
• All Sample symbols
• All functions
• All parameters + parameter type

Smart Snippets

• adsr
  • attack, decay, sustain, release
• asr
  • attack, sustain, release`
• pluck
  • sustain: 0, release
• slide
  • adds a _slide setting for the parameter just before the cursor
• slidecurve
  • same as slide but also adds a _slide_curve parameter
• slideshape
  • same as slide but also adds a _slide_shape parameter
• All integer enumerations representing wave shapes in wave shape / slide shape parameters
  • step
  • linear
  • sine
  • welch
  • squared
  • cubed
  • saw
  • pulse
  • triangle
  • sine

What's new?

v.2.1: Minor fixes

• Enumeration autocomplete now works in all places (in control fn, with_fx)
• Fixed NPEs (argh)
• Fixed aliases not working sometimes

v.2.0: Huge Update

• Much smarter autocompletion.
• Support for ALL samples, synths, fxs, functions, and their respective params
• Smart scope-based contextual autocompletion with pre-parsing features
• Added autocompletion directives

v.1.1: No file size limit! (only if https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi/commit/16a55e7657ea5d457c70e7594adcdcbb2b9e1ccd is excluded)

• Previously, sending OSC messages over UDP to the Sonic Pi server directly limited the maximum file size
• Sonic Pi v.2.11 (still under dev) now supports loading files into the buffer and playing it directly with the /save-and-run-buffer-via-local-file OSC command
• This feature can be accessed via the command palatte (ctrl-shift-P) as Play Huge File, but you can create your own keybindings.

v1.0: The fork

• rkh seems to have stopped development on atom-sonic, so I decided to reincarnate it as sonic-pi-autocomplete
• Improved autocomplete, now with context sensing
• Fixed not able to run code, creds to this patch
• Added necessary snippets from live_loops to amp_slide: 1, amp_slide_curve: 3
• Updated all synth names, samples, fx to the latest release: Sonic Pi v2.10
• Added placeholders for things like note_slide_shape, because memorizing 0: Step, 1: Linear, etc... won't cut

TODO:

• Add autocomplete for cue and sync
• Allow function aliasing directives to be placed right before functions so that the redundant alias name parameter needn't be there.