Thesis for the Degree of Master of Science Modular Synthesizer Programming in Haskell

In this thesis, we present an implementation of a modular synthesizer in Haskell using Yampa. A synthesizer, be it a hardware instrument or a pure software implementation, as here, is said to be modular if it provides soundgenerating and sound-shaping components that can be interconnected in arbitrary ways. Yampa, a Haskell-embedded implementation of Functional Reactive Programming, supports flexible, purely declarative construction of hybrid systems. Since music is a hybrid continuous-time and discretetime phenomenon, Yampa is a good fit for such applications, offering some unique possibilities compared to most languages targeting music or audio applications. Through the presentation of our synthesizer application, we demonstrate this point and provide insight into the Yampa approach to programming reactive, hybrid systems. We develop the synthesizer gradually, starting with fundamental synthesizer components and ending with an application that is capable of rendering a standard MIDI file as an audio with respectable performance.