The land of light head
Hello I've just downloaded PD and begun to work through the manual
I'm a newbie with a severe need of pointing in the right direction and questions answering like are these things possible?

I am working on a mac. I have a excel spreadsheet of data collected from a weather machine. I have put 'ifs' in new columns to create parameters to generate columns of note, note length, timeline position and velocity. This happens with 6 different parts.

I have then lovingly pasted each answer into logic express 7 to create lovely music. Logic express won't even allow me to paste a line at a time.
So as you can imagine terribly time consuming.

So can I write something with PD that either I paste the original excel data in one big chunk into or get it to read the data. Can I then write these parameters into PD as excel only lets me write so much before I have to send it to the next column. At the moment I have utter belief in another way forward so I'm not refining my excel virtuosity. And it takes me ages to prepare another sheet of data.

Anyhow can PD facilitate me pasting 3 different columns of data to generate six parts of music with 4 different parameters note, note length, timeline and velocity?

Where do I start ? I imagine that there are patches that do very similar things but this is only my biased imagination. After skimming through the manual to try to find something equal to what I want I get to I think that it is "chapter 9 data structures" that my level of understanding needs to reach to.

So should I just sit an work through the manual till here should I go to this workshop in Amsterdam. http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-15576-en.html?lang=en
Should I pursue a different direction completely? Is Pd what I want?
I have a bit of a time limit for an exhibition in middle of October.
I could continue to paste results from excel which is quite dreary and gives neck ache.
Is there a ready made patch out there or something I could quite simply alter?
Thanks

Try looking into the example patches in the ./doc directory of Pd (in mac you might have to alt-click on the Pd app and choose "show contents"). I'm pretty sure that you could export your excel sheet into a delimited text file and then read that file with Pd, line-by-line, interpreting it however you wish. There should be an example patch that goes over file handling, at which point it's just a matter of reading the data as inputs to your instruments.

Thank you very much. From your response I can now begin to see that this is possible. I find things about arrays and read text file. This gives me a way in to the rest of the world. I start a new journey.

Winds of knowledge circle,
Infinite in their variety.
What sail must one raise
To receive the thought
Whose time has come?

Words of time

After receiving your first response, I went and took a good hard look at pure data, trying to find those glimmering jewels, to assess my capabilities with what was required. My brain returned the value of this being a very complex thing to do with my limited understanding. The question was about diving in, committing to a process that may take would most probably take much more time than I envisaged.

First I have to get PD to read the file 3 columns simultaneously with some kind of buffer so that it can read all the data then apply the parameters.
Then I have to get PD to apply the parameters.
Then I have to get PD to read the results and play 6 parts at once.

My main problem was/is structure creating the right structure.
Perhaps I should do some work in excel first and then get PD to read it.
Could I make a patch that I could use with logic express does PD work like that?

Meanwhile my friend suggested that perhaps it was possible to write a midi file from the data. And has today returned with it probably is possible to use python classes to write a midi file from reading the data and could do it, it would probably take about 30 hours.

So here I am inspired to respond to your words my brain at right angles, Pd is in the corner I am trying to communicate telepathically. I know it doesn't work like that.
Resource verses resource.

Well I don't have any personal experience using Pd in filehandling, so someone else could probably help you a bit more at this point. You have the right idea for the method, and here are some objects that I would suggest to use. Here's the algorithm I would suggest:

1. Read a line from the input file
This can be done with [tabread] but I'm pretty sure there are better / easier objects to use. In any case, let's say you get your line from the file which has values seperated by tabs

2. Split the line into its components
Something like [unpack] can help you here, although I'm not sure what the data format is in Pd for lists. I think there might be some external object in zexy that allows you to specify which character delimits each element in a list (so you could seperate the values by commas or colons or whatever).

3. Play the parts simultaneously
Here you would want to use a [poly] object. Again I don't have a whole lot of experience here but there should be plenty of help files available on the subject. You will want to investigate how to use things like [stripnote] and other MIDI-related objects in order to ensure that your parameters are properly formatted.

I don't think your project is beyond Pd's capabilities by any means, but you may have to invest some time exploring each subject seperately in order to fit the whole thing together.

An existence is indivisible only as much as its components are infinite.

@adata said:

Anyhow can PD facilitate me pasting 3 different columns of data to generate six parts of music with 4 different parameters note, note length, timeline and velocity?

Here's an example of [textfile] used to read a 3 column data file {note pitch, note length, amplitude}

[textfile] stores the data. It is read in by the message [read filename.txt(

Next we [rewind( the file

Each [bang( message outputs the next row

Each row is turned into a list, this works for whitespace delimited data

The second element is the length so to sequence the data this is the delay before another bang is issued to [textfile]

The remaining two elements are packed back into a list to send to the simple synth

Hope this helps you along the way. Reading your requirements I don't understand them because there is some conflicting info. You mention 3 columns but then state 4 parameters.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/readweather.pd

And here's the data file I used to test it.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/weather-forecast.txt