Oscillators
Oscillators are continuously varying patterns.
Unless otherwise stated, oscillators give minimum values of 0 and maximum values of 1, and repeat once per cycle.
Oscillators are continuous patterns, which means they don't have any structure, and must be used with a pattern that does. For example d1 $ sound "bd*8" >| pan sine won't work well, because the >| operator instructs tidal to take structure from the right, and sine doesn't have any structure, so tidal will simply trigger events at a fixed rate (depending on your configuration, this might be very fast). d1 $ sound "bd*8" |> pan sine is better, because |> takes structure from the left, so eight kick drums will play, with pan values sampled from the sine wave for each of the eight events.
Where a pattern has the type Fractional a => Pattern a, that means that they can be used both as floating point numbers or (rational) time values.
sine
Type: sine :: Fractional a => Pattern a
A sine wave.
d1 $ sound "bd*8" # pan sinecosine
Type: cosine :: Fractional a => Pattern a
A cosine wave, i.e. a sine shifted in time by a quarter of a cycle.
d1 $ sound "bd*8" # pan cosine # speed (sine + 0.5)square
Type: square :: Fractional a => Pattern a
A squarewave, starting at 0, then going up to 1 halfway through a cycle.
d1 $ sound "bd*8" # pan (cat [square, sine])tri
Type: tri :: Fractional a => Pattern a
A triangle wave, starting at 0, then linearly rising to 1 halfway through a cycle, then down again.
d1 $ sound "bd*16" # speed (slow 2 $ range 0.5 2 tri)saw
Type: saw :: Fractional a => Pattern a
A sawtooth wave starting at 0, then linearly rising to 1 over one cycle, then jumping back to 0.
d1 $ sound "bd*8" # pan (slow 2 saw)isaw
[Type signature|Type]]: saw :: Fractional a => Pattern a
An inverted sawtooth, starting at 1, then linearly falling to 0 over one cycle, then jumping back to 1.
d1 $ sound "bd*8" # pan (slow 2 isaw)Random oscillators
rand
Type: rand :: Fractional a => Pattern a
An infinitely detailed stream of (pseudo-)random numbers. See[ the rand page for more details.
d1 $ sound "bd*8" # pan randirand
Type: irand :: Num a => Int -> Pattern a
A function from an integer (giving the maximum) to a stream of (pseudo-)random integer numbers. See[ the rand page for more details.
d1 $ sound "drum*8" # n (irand 8)choose and friends
These have their own page, click the names for more information:
Type: choose :: [a] -> Pattern a
choose continuously oscillates between random choices.
Type: chooseBy :: Pattern Double -> [a] -> Pattern a
chooseBy uses an oscillator (or other pattern) to select elements.
Type: wchoose :: [(a, Double)] -> Pattern a
wchoose continuously oscillates between random choices, with each choice given a weight/likelihood.
Type: wchooseBy :: Pattern Double -> [(a,Double)] -> Pattern a
wchooseBy is like wchoose but another oscillator/pattern is used to select weighted elements.