Documentation
Sialk plays work made for the web as layers you mix live, moved by the music. Today that means GLSL shaders, p5 sketches and video clips; when a new kind lands, Sialk says so plainly rather than loading it and hoping.
New here? Start at the top: four short pages take you from nothing to a visual on a second screen, moving with the room.
Start here
From nothing to a visual on screen, moving with the music. About ten minutes, and nothing to write.
- What Sialk isAnd what it is not, which is the faster half of the answer.
- Install and first runDownload, open it past macOS, and know what you are looking at.
- Your first visual on screenAdd a layer, mix it, put it on a second screen.
- Play music into itSialk listens to an input device. Here is how to give it one.
How it works
Three ideas. Everything else in these pages is a detail of one of them.
- Layers, parameters, modulationThe whole model, in about a page.
- What Sialk playsGLSL and p5 today, by name, and what happens to everything else.
Playing it
The surface, control by control.
- LayersAdding, mixing, ordering, removing.
- ParametersThe four every layer gets, and the ones your sketch declares.
- ModulationBase, reach, and the things that push a value around.
- The audioWhat Sialk hears and what it works out from it.
- Connect a DAWThe Sialk: Connect plugin, stems, the master, and your project’s exact tempo. Arrives with v1.
- The output and fullscreenThe window is the output, not a preview of it.
- Perform and BuildThe same controls, arranged two ways.
- Saving a showWhat a .sialk file holds, and what it does not.
Writing a sketch
For the people who make the visuals. Sialk runs your code rather than a recording of it, so this is where the instrument gets interesting.
- A GLSL sketchOne folder, one sketch.glsl, no page and no loop.
- A p5 sketchOne sketch.js in global mode. p5 itself is supplied.
- Reading the audiowindow.sialk, the versioned surface your sketch is written against.
- Declaring parametersHand the performer a fader, a switch, a colour or a trigger.
- Your own control panellil-gui and dat.GUI, kept off the wall and put on the surface.
- Writing a sketch with AIPaste the contract into the assistant you already use, and drag the result on.
Reference
Tables to come back to.
- Keyboard referenceEvery key, and where they work.
- What is in the betaHonestly, and with the release each missing piece arrives in.
- When something goes wrongThe log, the messages along the bottom, and how to report it.