MacOS installation

Easy Installation

For an easy, hands-off install, try tidal-bootstrap instead of the manual instructions below.

Manual Installation

Prerequisites

Required Prerequisites

Before installing Tidal, make sure the following are installed first:

• Haskell (via ghcup)
• Atom Editor (if you don't like the atom editor for some reason, please check out the list of alternatives)
• SuperCollider (pick the latest version)
• Git

Optional Prerequisites

The following is optional, but highly recommended:

• SC3 Plugins - you may need the SuperCollider sc3-plugins if you want to use any of the synths included in SuperDirt. Most of the examples in the documentation will still work, so you could skip this step and return to it later.

Install TidalCycles

In a terminal window, we will add the path to our GHC installation to a file that is executed by our terminal every time it loads.

For macOS 10.14 or before, the terminal uses bash, so the file we need to modify is .bashrc:

 . "$HOME/.ghcup/env"
 echo '. $HOME/.ghcup/env' >> "$HOME/.bashrc"

For macOS10.15 Catalina, the terminal uses zsh, so the file we need to modify is .zshrc:

 . "$HOME/.ghcup/env"
 echo '. $HOME/.ghcup/env' >> "$HOME/.zshrc"

After this, we will use cabal to first update it package directory, and then to install the TidalCycles library. We will also run these two commands every time we want to update our TidalCycles library to the latest version.

 cabal update
 cabal install tidal --lib

If you've never installed TidalCycles before, then the cabal install tidal --lib step may take some time. At the end of the command output, it should say Installed tidal-x.x.x (where x.x.x is the latest version number) without any errors.

Install SuperDirt

Start SuperCollider, and in the editor window paste in the following line of code:

Quarks.checkForUpdates({Quarks.install("SuperDirt", "v1.7.2"); thisProcess.recompile()})

Run the code by clicking on it, to make sure the cursor is on this line, then hold down Shift and press Enter.

It'll take a while to install. You'll see something like the following:

Installing SuperDirt
Installing Vowel
Vowel installed
Installing Dirt-Samples
Dirt-Samples installed
SuperDirt installed
compiling class library...
...
(then some blah blah, and finally, something like:)
...

*** Welcome to SuperCollider 3.10.0. *** For help press Ctrl-D.

Install Atom Extension

Start Atom, and install the TidalCycles plugin. You can find it via the menus under edit > settings > install, then typing “tidalcycles” into the search box.

Once it's installed, you'll need to change the "ghci path" setting for the tidalcycles package to the following: ~/.ghcup/bin/ghci

Once that’s all installed and configured, restart atom.

Install VS Code Extension

Start VS Code, and install the TidalCycles extension by searching the extensions marketplace. You can follow the instructions from here to ensure you know how to use it correctly.

Test Your Installation

Now you are ready to Start TidalCycles and SuperDirt for the first time.