wading into the tide
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# Wading into Tidal
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I stumbled across [TidalCycles](https://tidalcycles.org/) lately.
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It exists at my happy cross-section of automation, rave music and open source software.
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It's a [livecoding]() language/interpreter/instrument based on Haskell (in which I am also particularly interested!) and I decided to try it out.
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This is a short post explaining the steps I took and resources I used to install and get started playing with Tidal on Arch Linux using Neovim.
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# Realtime Scheduling
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First I had to .
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Similarly to a DAW - I suppose Tidal is kind of a DAW? Audio engineers will squirm - it's important for Tidal to have high-precision timing, unlike most software.
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This kind of control can be risky, so most systems don't make it available straight out the gate - Arch is one of them.
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See [this post](https://jackaudio.org/faq/linux_rt_config.html) for a more detailed explanation, as well as a list of distributions which do enable realtime scheduling straight away.
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In my case, I found a section on the [JACK ArchWiki page](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/JACK_Audio_Connection_Kit#Realtime_scheduling_and_additional_resources) that provided an easier solution.
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Install the `realtime-privileges` package and add your user to it:
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```
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sudo pacman -S realtime-privileges
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sudo usermod -a -G realtime ktyl
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```
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As with all group changes, you'll need to re-log or reboot for changes to take effect.
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# Linux Audio
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There are three components to my local audio setup in the context of Tidal.
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First is [JACK](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/JACK_Audio_Connection_Kit#Realtime_scheduling_and_additional_resources), which is a low-latency audio daemon with a confusing number of implementations.
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There is a list and comparison on the ArchWiki page, but I found the package I needed to install was `pipewire-jack` (as opposed to `jack` or `jack2`), which leads nicely into Pipewire, the second component.
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[Pipewire](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pipewire) is a multimedia framework which aims to solve audio problems on Linux Once And For All.
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It's an abstraction and doesn't directly play audio itself, rather deferring that responsibility further down the line.
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To actually play audio, I am using the [PulseAudio](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PulseAudio) which I already had installed.
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However, this didn't work out of the box because Pulse and Pipewire had no idea about each other.
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To resolve this, I had to install the `pipewire-pulse` package.
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# SuperCollider and SuperDirt
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Now we're getting to the fun stuff!
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I mostly followed [this guide](https://roosnaflak.com/tech-and-research/install-tidal-cycles-on-arch-linux/), but I found I had to do a couple things a little differently - maybe it's a bit of a dated guide? - which I'll describe here.
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First I installed `haskell-tidal` from the AUR (I use the [`yay` AUR helper](https://github.com/Jguer/yay).
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Then, as I wanted to use Neovim, I had to install the `tidalcycles/vim-tidal` plugin, using the [`vim-plug` plugin manager](https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug), and remembering to run `:PlugUpdate`.
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The guide then describes steps to make the `tidal` binary available system-wide - however I found the path it describes didn't exist.
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Instead, based on the path `vim-plug` installs to (`~/.local/share/nvim/` rather than `~/.config/nvim/`), I found my actual steps were:
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```
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cd ~/.local/share/nvim/plugged/vim-tidal
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sudo make install
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```
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Next I opened SuperCollider with `scide` and installed SuperDirt.
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Again the guide seemed a bit out of date in the version of SuperDirt it lists - I found I needed to use `"v1.7.2"` as the version string, rather than `v1.1.3` as listed.
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By the time you're reading this, the version listed here may be out of date, so if you have trouble with this stage that's what I'd check first.
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```
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Quarks.checkForUpdates({Quarks.install("SuperDirt", "v1.7.2");
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thisProcess.recompile()})
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```
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To run code in SuperCollider, select the block you'd like to execute and press `Ctrl + Enter`.
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At this stage, everything should be installed (notwithstanding any error messages, troubleshooting section not included) and we should be ready to go.
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Start SuperDirt up in SuperCollider:
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```
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SuperDirt.start;
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```
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Now, open a tidal file in Neovim:
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```
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nvim test.tidal
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```
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And enter a Tidal pattern!
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```
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d1 $ sound "bd sn"
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```
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To play it, put the cursor in the line and press `Ctrl + E`.
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Neovim should open a new window containing a Tidal terminal, and find and connect to the runing Tidal instance.
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That's it!
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Have fun making beats.
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If you have any trouble with this guide, there's an off chance I've learned a bit more about in the interim, so feel free to [ping me an email](mailto:me@ktyl.dev)!
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Or of course, ask the nice folk over at [Tidal Club](https://club.tidalcycles.org/).
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