Python music sequencer timing problems

[John O'Hagan]

On Mon, 15 Dec 2008, John O'Hagan wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Dec 2008, Bad Mutha Hubbard wrote:
> > John O'Hagan wrote:
> > > On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, badmuthahubbard wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > > from time import time, sleep
> > >
> > > start = time()
> > > for event in music:
> > >     duration=len(event) #Really, the length of the event
> > >     play(event)
> > >     while 1:
> > >         timer = time()
> > >         remaining = start + duration - timer
> > >         if remaining < 0.001:
> > >             break
> > >         else:
> > >             sleep(remaining / 2)
> > >     stop(event)
> > >     start += duration
> >
> > Very interesting approach, halving the remaining duration.  Right now
> > I'm not working with note-offs, Csound takes care of the duration.  I
> > just need to be able to call the notes at the right times.
>
> [...]
>
> I'm also using the above code without the "stop(event)" line for playing
> non-midi stuff (fixed-length samples for example), which from the sound of
> it also applies to your requirement - IOW, you _can_ use it just to start
> notes at the right time, because the note-playing loop sleeps till then.
>

And as I realized after having a good sleep myself, this is only useful for 
timing events which occur sequentially and do not overlap, which is how my 
program works because it generates the events in real time, but which may be 
of no use in your case. But I suppose the same principle could be applied to 
reduce the number of calls needed in a separate timing thread.

Unless of course each event contained the start-time of the next event as an 
attribute....?

John