Clamps Overview

Clamps, the C​ommon L​isp A​ided M​usic P​roduction S​ystem is an integrated environment for the production of music in the areas of algorithmic composition, electronic music and its performance. It can be used for non-realtime production of instrumental scores or fixed media, as a toolbox for music simulation or as a development environment in a broad field of applications like advanced DSP, realtime instruments, performances and installative work.

In this regard it is comparable to other realtime and non-realtime music programming environments like Pure Data, Max/MSP, Csound, SuperCollider, CLM, Common Music, Chuck, Faust, CDP, Open Music, OpusModus, Slippery Chicken and Music21.

Clamps is a collection of tools, developed over the course of some decades primarily for the artistic work of its author, biased by his conceptual and aesthetic ideas. It is put together and made public in the hope it might be useful for others, but — like one of the integral characteristics of the beauty of Art in general — without any explict or implicit warranty that it fits any purpose whatsoever.

The Documentation of Clamps is split into five parts, accessible using the Top Menu:

• The Overview explains the raison d'etre of Clamps and gives a short overview of its components, followed by installation instructions, a short primer and an introduction into tools available when working with Common Lisp in Emacs.

• The Clamps Packages section gives a more detailed introduction with examples into the internal components specifically written for Clamps. The external components which make up a large part of the functionality of Clamps, are not documented here as they are well documented in their own respective documention available online.

• The CM Dictionary is part of the Common Lisp version of Common Music and is integrated into the Emacs/Lisp interface with online symbol lookup using the <C-c C-d c> keyboard shortcut on any of its entries. It is included here because Clamps extends the symbol lookup with the symbols added by Clamps in the Clamps Dictionary, providing a seemless integration.

• The Clamps Dictionary is inspired by and extends the CM Dictionary with the added symbols of Clamps. The entries of this dictionary are linked in the Emacs Lisp Interface with the same <C-c C-d c> keyboard shortcut as the CM Dictionary.

• Fomus is a reproduction of the original documentation of FOMUS, added here for convenience.

Note

This documentation serves as a reference manual for the regular user and not as a step by step introduction or tutorial into the system. These topics are or will be covered in seperate publications. Knowledge of Common Lisp, the Emacs Editor and the basics of Common Music, Incudine or GUI programming are required to take full advantage of this documentation.

Acknowledgements

Clamps would not have been possible without the tremendous work put into Incudine by Tito Latini, Common Music by Rick Taube, FOMUS by David Psenicka, CLOG by David Botton, ATS by Juan Pampin and of course Common Lisp by innumerable people, who helped building this amazing programming language with all its extensions over the last 65+ years. Making all their work available to the public using an open source license provides the basis for being able to extend it. It can't be expressed enough how grateful and privileged I feel having been able to use the results of their work and benefit from them throughout my artistic career. In that sense making Clamps available to the public is my contribution intended to pay back to the community.

Orm Finnendahl, August 2024