samaaron/sonic-pi: v2.1.0 - 'Core'

The focus of release is very much on technical improvements, efficiency and general polish.

The most obvious and exciting change is the introduction of the live_loop which will change the way you work with Sonic Pi. For more information on live_loop take a look at the new section in the tutorial. Another very exciting development is that v2.1 marks the official support for Windows thanks to the excellent work by Jeremy Weatherford. Finally, this release is also the first release where Sonic Pi has a Core Team of developers. Please give a warm welcome to Xavier Riley, Jeremy Weatherford and Joseph Wilk.

• New fn live_loop - A loop for live coding
• New fn inc - increment
• New fn dec - decrement
• New fn quantise - quantise a value to resolution
• New fn factor? - Factor test
• New fn at - Run a block at the given times
• New fn degree - for resolving a note in a scale by degree such as :i, :iv
• New fn chord_degree - Construct chords based on scale degrees
• New TL fn use_sample_bpm - for changing the BPM based on a sample's duration
• New fn rest? - Determine if note or args is a rest
• New fn vt - Get virtual time
• New fn set_control_delta! - Set control delta globally
• wait now handles both sleep and sync functionality
• Allow first arg to play to be a proc or lambda. In which case simple call it and use the result as the note
• Teach play to accept a single map argument (in which case it will extract :note key out if it exists.
• Fns play and synth now treat 'notes' nil, :r and :rest as rests and don't trigger any synths.

• Updated and improved tutorial
• Much improved autocompletion
• Add HPF, LPF, mono forcer and stereo swapping preferences to new studio section for use when performing with Sonic Pi through an external PA.
• Shortcuts overhauled - now supports basic Emacs-style Ctrl-* navigation.
• Shortcuts Alt-[ and Alt-] now cycle through workspaces
• Shortcuts now work when toolbar is hidden
• Font sizes for individual workspaces are now stored between sessions
• Ctl-Mouse-wheel zooms font on Windows
• Links are now clickable (opening external browser)
• Entries in docsystem's synth arg table are now clickable and will take focus down to arg documentation
• Stop users accidentally clearing entire workspace if they type quickly after hitting run
• Hitting F1 or C-i over a function name now opens up the doc system at the relevant place

• Reworked examples.
• Much improved efficiency in many areas - especially for Raspberry Pi.
• Avoid occasional clicking sound when stopping runs
• Note Cb is now correctly resolved to be a semitone lower than C
• Non RP systems now start with more audio busses (1024)
• Array#sample and Array#shuffle are now correctly seeded with thread local random generator
• Log files are now placed into ~/.sonic-pi/log
• Chords and scales now wrap around when accessed from indexes outside of their range.
• rand_i and rrand_i now correctly return integers rather than floats
• rrand arguments now correctly handle a range of 0 (i.e. min == max)
• Line offset in error messages is now correct
• When saving files on Windows, CRLF line endings are used
• Stop users defining functions with same name as core API fns

• New samples (bass drums, snares and loops)
• Allow mod_range param to have negative values (for oscillating with lower notes)
• Change slide mechanism to default to linear sliding with support for changing the curve type. All modifiable args now have corresponding _slide_shape and _slide_curve args.
• Improve TB303 synth - now supports separate cutoff ADSR envelopes. New args:
  • cutoff_attack,
  • cutoff_sustain,
  • cutoff_decay,
  • cutoff_release,
  • cutoff_min_slide,
  • cutoff_attack_level,
  • cutoff_sustain_level,
  • cutoff_env_curve