Getting Started and Advanced Work

To learn the athenaCL system, many basic concepts of the system design and command interface must be examined in depth. The tutorials included in this document provide an overview to all essential concepts. Following the tutorials are appendices, providing documentation useful for reference. Much of this reference documentation is also available from within athenaCL.

All users should read Tutorial 1: The Interactive Command Line Interface and Tutorial 2: AthenaObjects and EventModes to gain familiarity with the interface and basic athenaCL concepts. Basic composition tools are covered in Tutorial 4: Creating and Editing Textures, Tutorial 5: Textures and Paths, and Tutorial 6: Textures and Clones. For more detailed information on organizing pitch structures, see Tutorial 3: Creating and Editing Paths.

Users with experience with Python and/or other generative music systems, or users who have mastered the athenaCL interactive command-line interface, will likely want to begin storing athenaCL command scripts in Python code files. This approach provides a wide range of opportunities for programmatically extending the power of athenaCL. A common approach for advanced usage of athenaCL is to use the interactive command-line interface for reference and sketching, and then store series of commands or command-generating procedures in Python files. The section Tutorial 7: Scripting athenaCL in Python provides basic examples for this approach. Additional demonstration Python scripts are distributed with athenaCL, in its demo directory.