Nyquist is an elegant and powerful language for
sound synthesis and music composition. Unlike
score languages that tend to deal only with
events, or signal processing languages that tend
to deal only with signals and synthesis, it
handles both in a single integrated system. It is
also flexible and easy to use because it is based
on an interactive Lisp interpreter. You can design
instruments by combining functions (much as you
would using the orchestra languages of Music V,
cmusic, or Csound). You can call upon these
instruments and generate a sound just by typing a
simple expression. You can combine simple
expressions into complex ones to create a whole
composition. It runs under any Unix environment,
MacOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT, and it
produces sound files as output (or direct audio
output under Windows).
