alda.now, when coupled with alda.lisp, provides a way to work with Alda scores and play music programmatically within a Clojure application.
alda.now provides a play! macro, which evaluates the body, finds any new note events that were added to the score, and plays them.
Example usage of alda.now in a Clojure application:
(require '[alda.lisp :refer :all])
(require '[alda.now :refer (set-up! play!)])
(score*)
(part* "upright-bass")
; This is optional. If left out, Alda will set up the MIDI synth the first
; time you tell it to play something.
(set-up! :midi)
(play!
(octave 2)
(note (pitch :c) (duration (note-length 8)))
(note (pitch :d))
(note (pitch :e))
(note (pitch :f))
(note (pitch :g) (duration (note-length 4))))Of note, alda.repl uses alda.now to play the score the user is creating during the REPL session, so you could think of alda.repl as an alda.now "sample project."
Another thing to note is that alda.now does not load the FluidR3 MIDI soundfont like the CLI version of Alda does by default. In the near future, Alda may be packaged with FluidR3 and alda.now could provide a simple helper method to load FluidR3. Currently, FluidR3 is loaded dynamically by the Alda CLI.
If you are interested in using FluidR3 or other MIDI soundfonts with Alda in a Clojure application, you can use midi.soundfont.