ChucK Racks

Music programming => your DAW
ChucK Racks

Learn how to use Chuck Racks and integrate it into your work in the new online course from CalArts, The Modern Music Technologist.

ChucK Racks makes it possible to write and execute ChucK programs as VST/AudioUnit plugins. The ChucK Racks architecture supports the following features:

  • Process incoming audio in ChucK (i.e. Audio FX plugins)
  • Process MIDI events from the host in ChucK programs (MIDI FX plugins)
  • Write synthesis plugins in ChucK that run as regular synthesizer audio plugins in a host/DAW
  • Synchronize clock and beat-time between a host/session and ChucK
  • Generate new MIDI/OSC events from ChucK (e.g. writing MIDI/OSC sequencer plugins)
  • Automate variables in ChucK code using host automation lanes
Please refer to our 2017 ICMC Paper: “ChucK Racks: Text-Based Music Programming for the Digital Audio Workstation” for a detailed overview of ChucK Racks and how it works (PDF).
Source code: https://github.com/mtiid/chuck-racks
Note: ChucK Racks is currently experimental and is provided as 32/64-bit Universal Binary plugins in both AudioUnit and VST formats for Mac OSX 10.10+ only. At the moment you can also only run one instance of ChucK Racks at a time. We are working to address this limitation, as well as adding Windows support and other improvements and fixes which can be tracked on GitHub.