Programming Modular Synthesizers in Haskell

In this demonstration, 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 sound-generating and sound-shaping components that can be interconnected in arbitrary ways. Yampa, a Haskell-embedded implementation of Functional Reactive Programming, supports flexible construction of hybrid systems. Since music is a hybrid continuous-time and discrete-time phenomenon, Yampa and is a good fit for such applications, offering some unique possibilities compared to most languages targeting music or audio applications. The demonstration illustrates this point by showing how simple audio blocks can be described and then interconnected in a network with dynamically changing structure, reflecting the changing demands of a musical performance.