Blue

An Integrated Music Environment, powered by Csound.

Blue is an open-source, cross-platform desktop application for composing music. Use visual tools together with text and code to create the music of your dreams.

Latest Release: 2.9.1


Download

Download Blue 2.9.1 from Github for your platform below:

Windows Linux macOS (M1/M2 arm64)

macOS (Intel x86_64)

View Release Information

 

macOS and Windows releases include a Java Developer Kit to run Blue. On Linux, you will also need to install a 64-bit Java 11+ JDK (Java Developer Kit) to run Blue. The recommended version is Temurin Java 17+ from Adoptium.

Download Java JDK

 

Developer Builds

Developer builds are created using the very latest Blue development code. They may contain new features and bug fixes but also may contain their own issues as they represent in-process work. You may download a development build from Github Actions below. (Login required with Github account to download the artifacts.)

Download Dev Build

 

Older releases of Blue are available at:

Github Sourceforge


 

Blue is a music composition environment for Csound, written in Java, and available for use on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. It allows doing everything one can do in Csound as well as builds on top of it to offer the following features:

  • SoundObjects are the building blocks within Blue's score timeline. SoundObjects can be lists of notes, algorithmic generators, python script code, Csound instrument definitions, PianoRolls, Pattern Editors, Tracker interfaces, and more. These soundObjects may be text based or GUI-based as well.
  • Score timeline allows for visual organization of SoundObjects
  • Polyobject are objects which hold other SoundObjects, and have timelines in themselves. Working within them on their timelines and outside of them on the parent timeline helps organize and understand the concepts of objective time and relative time between different objects.
  • The soundOject library allow for instantiating multiple copies of a SoundObject, which allows for editing the original object and updating all copies.
  • NoteProcessors allow for modifying the SoundObjects score results, i.e. adding 2 to all p4 values, multiplying all p5 values by 6, etc. These NoteProcessors can be chained together to manipulate and modify objects to achieve things like transposition, serial processing of scores, and more.
  • The Orchestra manager organizes instruments and functions as an instrument librarian.
  • Graphical instruments and effects that help to increase musical workflow.
  • A mixer system and user-interface to easily connect instruments and effects together that follows a conventional mixer pardigm.
  • Syntax hilighting of Csound code.
  • SoundObject freezing - free up CPU cycles by pre-rendering objects
  • Microtonal support using scales defined in the Scala scale format, including a microtonal PianoRoll, Tracker, NoteProcessors, and more.
  • BlueLive - work with soundObjects in realtime to experiment with musical ideas or performance.
  • and much more!

Documentation

The latest documentation for Blue includes information about the program as well as a reference guide for the many different plugins (SoundObjects, Instruments, and NoteProcessors), and tutorials.

View Manual

Video Tutorials

Video Tutorials by Menno Knevel are available on Youtube.

Watch Videos

Wiki

The Blue Wiki contains useful articles contributed by the user community.

View Wiki


Support

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are the primary means to discuss Blue. Questions and comments on using Blue should go to the users mailing list while those regarding the development of Blue should be directed to the developer mailing list.

Click on the link name below to subscribe or manage your subscription for the list. Click on the archive link next to the list's description to search and view the archive for that mailing list.

bluemusic-users
Blue Users mailing list (Archive)
bluemusic-devel
Blue Developers mailing list (Archive)

Chat

For realtime conversations, join the #blue channel on the Csound Discord. (Signup for the Csound Discord here.)

Feedback

Did you find a bug? Or want to request a feature? Please use the Github Issue Tracker link below to search for existing issues or file new ones. Your feedback is valuable and contributes to making a better Blue!

Report an Issue

Acknowledgements

Thanks very much to Github for hosting the current Blue project site and Sourceforge for hosting the mailing lists and original project site!

Blue Github Project Blue Sourceforge Project