mimium

a programming language as an infrastructure for sound and music

stable: dev:

mimium(MInimal-Musical-medIUM) is a programming language for sound and music.

mimium is made to be an infrastructure for distributing music in a form of a source code, not only a tool for musicians and programmers.

Its syntax and semantics are technically inspired from several modern programming languages for sound such as Faust and Extempore.

You can write various expression from low-level signal processing to note-level processing with a simple syntax and high-performance. Since all the code is executed with JIT compilation using LLVM which has an equivalent performance as the dsp code written in general purpose languages such as C++.

A minimal example below generates a sinewave of 440Hz.

// minimal.mmm
twopi = 3.141595*2
sr = 48000
fn dsp(){
    out = sin(now * 440 * twopi / sr)
    return (out,out)
}

To run the code, type mimium path/minimal.mmm on your terminal application.

A special keyword self can be used in function, which is a last return value of the function. This enables an easy and clean expression of feedback connection of signal chain.

fn lpf(input:float,fb:float){    
    return (1-fb)*input + fb*self
}

You can also write a note-level processing by using @ operator which specifies the time when the function will be executed. Another special keyword now can be used for getting current logical time. An event scheduling is sample-accurate because the scheduler is driven by an audio driver.

freq = 440
fn noteloop()->void{
    freq = (freq+1200)%4000
    noteloop()@(now + 48000)
}

More specific infos about the language are on mimium Website.

Installation

mimium can be run on macOS(x86), Linux(ALSA backend), Windows(WASAPI backend). WebAssemby backend will be supported for future.

An easiest way to getting started is to use Visual Studio Code extension. Search "mimium" in extension tab and install it. When you create & open the file with the file extension .mmm, you will be asked to install the latest binary. The extension also contains syntax highlights for .mmm files.

On macOS and Linux, installation via Homebrew is recommended.

You can install mimium with a command as follows.

brew install mimium-org/mimium/mimium

Also, you can get a built binary from release section.

Build from Source

To build on Windows, you need to use MSYS2. For details, check GitHub Action Workflow.

Dependencies

cmake
bison >= 3.3
flex
llvm >= 11
Libsndfile
RtAudio(cmake will automatically download)

git clone https://github.com/mimium-org/mimium
cd mimium
# configure. if you want to install to specific directory, add -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/your/directory
cmake -Bbuild
# build
cmake --build build -j
# install
cmake --build build --target install