What bach brings
Music notation
Reactive paradigm
Why using bach
Free
Cross platform
Powerful data types
Some numbers about bach
What you can do with bach
Composition
Live notation
Education
Augmented sequencers
Synthesis
Video and lighting
Constraint programming
Analysis
The bach family

bach is the forefather of the family. It contains all the basic modules to deal with computer-aided composition in Max. It’s the first and library you should download, since all the other members of the family won’t even start working without bach.

cage contains ready-to-use modules to deal with many standard 20th- and 21th-century compositional techniques. It is library designed for musicians: you will only deal with musically meaningful parameters, without even worrying about lower-level implementation.
Because of this, cage is easier to deal with than bach; if visual programming with bach makes you nervous, you should definitely consider installing cage and give it a try.

dada is the newest member of the bach family: it contains non-standard graphical user interface for music generation and processing. dada is by design an open box: it is to bach what a laboratory is to a library. All of its components embrace a graphic, ludic, explorative approach to music; most of its component also refer to the worlds of plane geometry, physical modeling or recreational mathematics.
Projects
Comprovisador
Comprovisador is a system designed by Pedro Louzeiro to enable mediated soloist-ensemble interaction using machine listening, algorithmic compositional procedures and dynamic notation, in a networked environment. In real-time, as a soloist […]
MOZ’Lib
MOZ’Lib is a set of pedagogical tools designed to explore, at the same time: musical writing, creation and computer programming. It is currently developed by two composers based in Paris, […]
bach with Antescofo
Jonathan Bell uses bach.score as a tool for representing a melody which the computer tracks or follows, as well as for storing and displaying the actions to be made when […]
Sirens Cycle
Since his first quartet Korrespondenz (1992), Peter Eötvös has been interested in the transcription of phonetic elements to music, in order to make instruments speak. For Sirens Cycle, Eötvös’s latest […]
The SmartVox Project
Jonathan Bell’s piece Au Commencement was entirely composed (and delivered to the singers) with the help of the bach.roll space-time notation environment. The SmartVox project uses filmed sequences (mp4) of […]
my mother used to say
my mother used to say (2016) is a 10 minutes piece in three movements for fans and electromagnetic fields, by Amos Cappuccio. Here are Amos Cappuccio’s words about his work: […]
Three pieces. Catabasis I, II, III
Diego Dall’Osto’s “Three pieces. Catabasis I, II, III”, for violin and live audio-video electronics (2015), use bach and cage libraries both for computer assisted composition and for synthesis and performance […]
picture2score
Takuya Shimizu has developed tools to make orchestral scores from pictures by using bach in combination with Jitter. Within bach, one can individually set the color of each notehead in […]
Instant Ensemble
Nikola Kołodziejczyk’s Instant Ensemble is a response to predictable and repeatable music tours. Sheet music for each concert of the seven-piece band is created live literally in front of the […]
An Experiment with Time
Daniele Ghisi’s An Experiment with Time (2015), is both a 3-screens multimedia installation and a live piece for ensemble, video and electronics. This work inspired by the eponym book by […]
Laws of Fives
Seth Shafer’s Law of Fives (2015), for viola, bass clarinet, marimba, and computer, uses real-time notation and requires the performers to sight-read music as it is algorithmically generated during the […]
mymelody tsukurukun
mymelody tsukurukun is Takuya Shumizu’s tool to generate melodies by indicating a degree of complexity. Users input a time series of complexity (each value being between 0 and 1000), and […]
Orchids
bach, cage and dada are throroughly used in Ircam’s Orchids project, as interface tools for the automatic orchestration engine. More information here.