Skip to content
RESONON

Your First Project

On this page you turn the beat from the last pages into a piece: a file that plays the same every time, which you run from the terminal and get as a WAV file.

Work in the hello project from Your First Sound.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”

Open the hello folder and check that it contains resonon.toml and src/main.non. Evaluate STOP; in VSCode if the earlier beat is playing. The terminal run starts independently of that live session; it needs no variables from previous evaluations.

Look at the project

Section titled “Look at the project”

resonon new hello made this folder:

hello/
├── resonon.toml
├── src/
│   └── main.non
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
└── .gitignore
  • resonon.toml names the project and the version of resonon it is written for. Resonon finds a project by this file, so the code in src/ can find its kits and packages on any machine.
  • src/main.non is the piece. It is the file that resonon run runs.

Write the piece

Section titled “Write the piece”

Until now you ran lines one at a time, and the session kept them. A piece must do everything by itself, from the top. Replace what is in src/main.non with this:

use "std/instruments" { Sampler, Kit };
use "std/effects" { Lowpass, Delay };


set_project_title("hello");
set_bpm(120);


let drums = AudioTrack("drums");
drums.set_instrument(Sampler(Kit("CR-78")));
drums << [bd _ sd _, hh hh hh hh];
drums.set_effects(#[Lowpass("lowpass", 1200), Delay("delay", 0.25, 0.4)]);


let bass = AudioTrack("bass");
bass.set_instrument(Sampler(Kit("TR-808")));
bass << [bd _ _ bd, _ _ bd _];


render(8);

It is the beat you built, with two new lines at the top and one at the end:

  • set_project_title("hello") names the piece. set_bpm(120) sets its tempo: 120 BPM, and four beats in each cycle.
  • render(8) plays 8 cycles of the master output into a WAV file, faster than real time.

Run it

Section titled “Run it”

Save the file. In a terminal, in the hello folder, run:

Terminal window
resonon run

Resonon runs src/main.non from the top and exits. The file is in a new folder in the project:

renders/hello_<date>_<time>/master.wav

Open it in any audio player. It is 16 seconds long: 8 cycles of 2 seconds.

resonon run works from any folder inside the project. It runs the file once and stops, so a line like PLAY; in a piece plays nothing that you can hear: the program ends at once. To hear a piece while you work on it, select its lines in VSCode and press Cmd+Enter, as before.

Bounce each track

Section titled “Bounce each track”

Change the last line so that each track gets its own file, next to the mix:

render(#[drums, bass, master], 8);

Run resonon run again. A new folder has drums.wav, bass.wav and master.wav. Every run makes a new folder, so a render never writes over another one.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”