# CHANGELOG ## 2.4.3 (2026-05-12) * Adjusted the JVM options used by the player process to use 75% less memory. This should make Alda easier to run on devices with less RAM, e.g. Raspberry Pi. Thanks to [SomedayToday] for the contribution! ## 2.4.2 (2026-03-21) * Restored the `part` Lisp function, which existed in Alda 1 but was missing from Alda 2. You can now use `(part "piano")` to declare a part from within a Lisp expression. Thanks to [CodeForBeauty] for the contribution, and to [UlyssesZh] for reporting the issue! ## 2.4.1 (2026-01-01) Happy New Year! 🎆 This release includes a small update to the player process to log what audio devices are available on startup. This logging will not be seen by default, for a couple of reasons: 1. Player processes are run automatically in the background, so you will not see player logs when running the `alda` client. 2. The new logs are logged at the DEBUG level, so they will not appear unless you have enabled DEBUG-level logging when starting a player process. To see the full output, you can run a player process in the foreground with verbose logging by running `alda-player -v run`. You should see lines like these: ``` ... vmj INFO 2026-01-01 19:22:14 Main.run:77 - Starting receiver, listening on port 27701... vmj INFO 2026-01-01 19:22:14 MidiEngine.info:261 - [0] Initializing MIDI sequencer... vmj DEBUG 2026-01-01 19:22:14 MidiEngine.logAudioMixers:171 - Detected audio mixers: vmj DEBUG 2026-01-01 19:22:14 MidiEngine.logAudioMixers:174 - Mixer: name='Port Generic [hw:0]', vendor='ALSA (http://www.alsa-project.org)', version='6.8.0-90-generic', description='HD-Audio Generic, ATI R6xx HDMI' vmj DEBUG 2026-01-01 19:22:14 MidiEngine.logAudioMixers:174 - Mixer: name='Port Generic_1 [hw:1]', vendor='ALSA (http://www.alsa-project.org)', version='6.8.0-90-generic', description='HD-Audio Generic, Realtek ALC257' ... many more lines ... vmj INFO 2026-01-01 19:22:14 MidiEngine.info:261 - [0] Initializing MIDI synthesizer... vmj INFO 2026-01-01 19:22:15 MidiEngine.:341 - Synthesizer opened: name='Gervill', vendor='OpenJDK' vmj INFO 2026-01-01 19:22:15 MidiEngine.:347 - Sequencer transmitter connected to synthesizer receiver. vmj INFO 2026-01-01 19:22:18 MidiEngine.info:261 - [0] Player ready ``` Note that the synthesizer that was chosen to use is also logged at the INFO level. ## 2.4.0 (2025-12-27) * The `alda play` command now has a `--wait` (or `-w`) flag that will cause the command to block until playback is complete. This is useful for when you want to run Alda from another program and have it wait until the music is finished before continuing. Thanks to [lenianiva] for the feature request! * Fixed [a bug][issue-416] where running the REPL server was accidentally "claiming" 2 player processes to use instead of 1. ## 2.3.5 (2025-11-11) * Further improvements to make REPL note timing more robust. ## 2.3.4 (2025-11-08) * Fixed [an issue][issue-415] where an accumulating delay would occur in the REPL when using voices. A big thank you to [JakubSlacht] for their dedication in helping to solve this mystery! * Part IDs (as seen in `:score info`) are now short, sequential, and human-readable (e.g. "part001") instead of memory addresses. * The `:parts` and `:score info` REPL commands now sort parts by ID. ## 2.3.3 (2025-09-19) * Alda now officially supports Linux on a wider range of ARM devices. This includes both 32-bit (e.g. Raspberry Pi 2/3) and 64-bit (e.g. Raspberry Pi 4 and newer) processors. ## 2.3.2 (2025-05-20) * Fixed [an issue][issue-401] where nested repeats weren't working as expected. Thanks so much to [De-Alchmst] for the fix! * Fixed spacing in the `:help play` output. ## 2.3.1 (2024-08-04) Fixed an issue where ANSI color codes (e.g. `←[36m`) were being displayed when running Alda in Powershell. Thanks, [Vanello1908], for the contribution! See [this issue][issue-405] for further discussion. There is still a remaining issue where the background color is changing unexpectedly, but as of this release, the ANSI codes should at least be gone. ## 2.3.0 (2024-06-22) ### Improved MIDI channel assignment > Incidental note: This release includes some **breaking changes** to the Alda > OSC API, which is the communication layer between the Alda client and player > processes: > > * Added a required channel number argument to a handful of endpoints. > > * Removed `/track/{number}/midi/percussion` endpoint, which is no longer > needed. > > * Removed unused mute/unmute functionality. > > These changes will not affect the vast majority of Alda users. The only way > that you might run into issues is if you have written software that interfaces > with the Alda player process directly, instead of using the Alda client. > > The general Alda experience still works exactly the same way as it did before, > so the aforementioned changes probably won't affect you. As of this release, we've re-worked the way that MIDI channels are assigned to parts. This addresses [some shortcomings][midi-channel-assignment-discussion] that have have come up in discussions a few times. To summarize, prior to this release: * It was not possible to include more than 16 instruments in a score. * There was no visible error message when a score exceeded the number of available MIDI channels (16). The player process would log an error and do its best to play the score (leaving out some parts), but the client would just say "Playing..." and it was not obvious that there was a problem. * MIDI channel assignment order was non-deterministic. This meant that when you exported scores to MIDI files, the instruments used in each channel were not necessarily in the same order that they appeared in the score. * There was no way to control which MIDI channel was used for each part. As of this release: * MIDI channel assignment is now handled on the client side, and is **fully deterministic**. The order of parts presented in the score maps to the order of channels in exported MIDI files in an intuitive way. * The Alda client provides **helpful error messages** in cases where it is not possible to use the 16 available MIDI channels to play your score. * You can now have **more than 16 instruments in a score**, just as long as there are never more than 15 non-percussion instruments playing _at the same time_. I wrote a handful of fun, new example scores to show you what's possible: * [`all-instruments.alda`][all-instruments]: A demo of **all 128 General MIDI instruments**, played back to back * [`midi-channel-management.alda`][midi-channel-management]: A quick jazzy number featuring **31 instruments**: 1 percussion part playing throughout, and two groups of 15 instruments playing together at a time. * [`midi-channel-management-2.alda`][midi-channel-management-2]: A tiny example showing how the new `midi-channel` attribute works. * There is a new [`midi-channel` attribute][midi-channel-attribute] that allows you to explicitly specify which MIDI channel should be used at that point in time for the notes in that part. Most of you will never need to use this attribute, because Alda does a good job of automatically assigning MIDI channels to parts for you. But for those of you who want more control over MIDI channel assignment, this attribute will give you that power. I hope you enjoy Alda's newfound ability to handle large numbers of instruments in a score. I'm pretty excited about it! As always, please let us know if you notice any bugs or unexplained behavior! ### Other misc. changes * Fixed a bug in `alda doctor` where it would hang if there was an error during the "Send and receive OSC messages" step. Now if there's an error during that step, it will print the error message. * Client/player communication is now done via `127.0.0.1` by default, instead of `localhost`. These are effectively the same thing, but it's possible for `localhost` not to work, depending on your host configuration. `127.0.0.1` is more likely to work. ## 2.2.7 (2023-09-01) Added a `pid` column to the output of `alda ps`, the value of which is the process ID of each player and REPL server process in the list. ## 2.2.6 (2023-08-18) Upgraded Go library dependencies to patch security vulnerabilities. ## 2.2.5 (2023-05-07) * Corrected the casing of the word "MIDI" (it was "Midi" before) in the error message when a MIDI Note is outside of the 0-127 range. * The new `alda import` command can import a MusicXML file and produce a working Alda score. I'm excited about this - big thanks to [Scowluga] and [alan-ma] for their hard work on this exciting new feature! See [this blog post][alda-import-blog-post] for an overview of what `alda import` can do and how to use it. ## 2.2.4 (2022-11-24) * Added validation for when a MIDI note is outside of the 0-127 range. Thanks to [kylewilk567] for the contribution! ## 2.2.3 (2022-04-24) * Added a new `:parts` command that can be used during an Alda REPL session. It prints information about the parts in the current score. (To display more information about the current score, you can also use the existing `:score info` command.) Thanks, [n-makim], for the contribution! ## 2.2.2 (2022-04-17) This patch release is all about improvements to the way that player processes are managed in an Alda REPL session. Thanks to [elyisgreat] for [reporting the issue][issue-404] and to [ksiyuan] for investigating and [contributing a fix][pr-418]! * Fixed a bug causing `:stop` to sometimes not work in an Alda REPL session. * Fixed spurious "Failed to read player state" warnings that were often happening briefly while a player process is starting. * Fixed a potential edge case where, when using the Alda REPL, if a player process unexpectedly shuts down (not common), the Alda REPL session might continue to try to use the same player process. [issue-404]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/404 [pr-418]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/pull/418 ## 2.2.1 (2022-04-10) * Re-added the `pause` (i.e. rest) Lisp function that was available prior to Alda 2.0.0, but accidentally omitted during the rewrite. Thanks, [JustinLocke] for the contribution, and [UlyssesZh] for reporting [the issue][issue-382]! :raised_hands: [issue-382]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/382 ## 2.2.0 (2022-01-15) * On Mac computers, Alda now requires macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) or later. * There is now an experimental WebAssembly build of Alda! You can't do much with it yet, but hopefully in the near future, we'll be able to run Alda in the browser! :open_mouth: If you're interested in following the discussion (or maybe even contributing!), see [this issue][alda-in-the-browser]. [alda-in-the-browser]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/392 ## 2.1.0 (2021-12-29) * As a step to enable future work on exciting new features like automatic code formatting and importing from other formats like MusicXML, we have done some minor, under-the-hood refactoring of the Alda parser. Prior to this release, the Alda parser took a shortcut in that it had a step where it converted a list of tokens directly into a list of "score updates" (notes, chords, etc.). There is an important step that we were missing, which was producing an [AST][ast-wikipedia]. Whereas the parsing steps used to be: ``` characters -> tokens -> score updates ``` Now, the steps are: ``` characters -> tokens -> AST -> score updates ``` Although this is a minor refactor, there is some risk of breakage, so please [open an issue][open-an-issue] if you notice any problems! * We've added options for outputting the parsed AST of a score. This can be useful for debugging potential parser errors, as well as for building tooling (e.g. in text editors) that depends on the AST of an Alda source file. * `alda parse` now has `--output ast` and `--output ast-human` options. `ast` output is the AST in data form, represented as a single JSON object. Each AST node is an object that includes the keys `type` and (if the node has other nodes as children) `children`: ``` $ alda parse -c 'piano: c/e/g+' -o ast {"children":[{"children":[{"children":[{"children":[{"literal":"piano","source-context":{"column":1,"line":1},"type":"PartNameNode"}],"source-context":{"column":1,"line":1},"type":"PartNamesNode"}],"source-context":{"column":1,"line":1},"type":"PartDeclarationNode"},{"children":[{"children":[{"children":[{"children":[{"literal":"c","source-context":{"column":8,"line":1},"type":"NoteLetterNode"}],"source-context":{"column":8,"line":1},"type":"NoteLetterAndAccidentalsNode"}],"source-context":{"column":8,"line":1},"type":"NoteNode"},{"children":[{"children":[{"literal":"e","source-context":{"column":10,"line":1},"type":"NoteLetterNode"}],"source-context":{"column":10,"line":1},"type":"NoteLetterAndAccidentalsNode"}],"source-context":{"column":10,"line":1},"type":"NoteNode"},{"children":[{"children":[{"literal":"g","source-context":{"column":12,"line":1},"type":"NoteLetterNode"},{"children":[{"source-context":{"column":13,"line":1},"type":"SharpNode"}],"source-context":{"column":13,"line":1},"type":"NoteAccidentalsNode"}],"source-context":{"column":12,"line":1},"type":"NoteLetterAndAccidentalsNode"}],"source-context":{"column":12,"line":1},"type":"NoteNode"}],"source-context":{"column":8,"line":1},"type":"ChordNode"}],"source-context":{"column":8,"line":1},"type":"EventSequenceNode"}],"source-context":{"column":1,"line":1},"type":"PartNode"}],"type":"RootNode"} ``` `ast-human` output is the AST in a more compact, human-readable format: ``` $ alda parse -c 'piano: c/e/g+' -o ast-human RootNode PartNode [1:1] PartDeclarationNode [1:1] PartNamesNode [1:1] PartNameNode [1:1]: "piano" EventSequenceNode [1:8] ChordNode [1:8] NoteNode [1:8] NoteLetterAndAccidentalsNode [1:8] NoteLetterNode [1:8]: "c" NoteNode [1:10] NoteLetterAndAccidentalsNode [1:10] NoteLetterNode [1:10]: "e" NoteNode [1:12] NoteLetterAndAccidentalsNode [1:12] NoteLetterNode [1:12]: "g" NoteAccidentalsNode [1:13] SharpNode [1:13] ``` * In the Alda REPL, the `:score` command now has an `ast` option, which prints the human-readable version of the AST output: ``` alda> bassoon: o2 f alda> :score ast RootNode PartNode [1:1] PartDeclarationNode [1:1] PartNamesNode [1:1] PartNameNode [1:1]: "bassoon" EventSequenceNode [1:10] OctaveSetNode [1:10]: 2 NoteNode [1:13] NoteLetterAndAccidentalsNode [1:13] NoteLetterNode [1:13]: "f" ``` [ast-wikipedia]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_syntax_tree [open-an-issue]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/new/choose ## 2.0.8 (2021-12-20) * Security update: upgraded log4j to version 2.17.0 to patch CVEs. ## 2.0.7 (2021-12-15) * Security update: upgraded log4j to version 2.16.0 to patch CVEs. ## 2.0.6 (2021-10-04) * Fixed [a bug][issue-398] where a note length of 0 (e.g. `c0`) was accepted, and the note would play forever. A note length of `0`, `0s` or `0ms` now results in a validation error. [issue-398]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/398 ## 2.0.5 (2021-08-22) * Fixed [a bug][issue-388] where using an octave change inside a chord inside a cram expression produced unexpected results. * Fixed [a bug][issue-389] where playback was sometimes ending abruptly before the end of the score. [issue-388]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/388 [issue-389]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/389 ## 2.0.4 (2021-08-14) * `alda shutdown` now prints a helpful message letting you know what it is doing (shutting down player processes). * If `alda stop` or `alda shutdown` fails to send a "stop" or "shutdown" message to a player process, it will now print a warning and continue instead of printing an error and exiting. (This scenario is usually not a critical problem, and it will resolve itself within a couple of minutes.) * `alda play` and `alda export` are now more resilient against scenarios where old player processes died mysteriously and left around stale state files that suggest they are still reachable. In scenarios like those, there will now be a long pause while the Alda client attempts to reach the dead player process, then it will print a warning saying it was unable to do so, and proceed to try another player process. This might happen a few times, but Alda will eventually recover and proceed to play/export your score. Note that this should rarely, if ever, happen! If you are seeing this happen a lot, then there is probably something weird going on with your player processes. Please have a look at the player logs (run `alda-player info` to learn where to find the logs) and let us know if you see any errors or stacktraces. This information will help us make further improvements in the future! ## 2.0.3 (2021-08-01) * Fixed a bug where input like `[c1s]` (a duration in seconds at the end of an event sequence) was causing a parse error. * Fixed a sporadic runtime error where this message would appear: `panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference` * `alda ps` output now includes Alda REPL servers in addition to player processes. Example output: ``` $ alda ps | column -t -s $'\t' id port state expiry type itv 33659 ready 5 minutes from now player lhx 36583 active 5 minutes from now player olt 34539 ready 5 minutes from now player utj 40235 ready 5 minutes from now player yae 35935 ready 7 minutes from now player zew 40425 ready 6 minutes from now player itp 33643 - - repl-server jom 34191 - - repl-server ``` ## 2.0.2 (2021-07-31) * Fixed a "stale state" bug where Alda would occasionally attempt to use old player processes that are no longer running. Whereas before, only player processes would clean up stale state files, now the client cleans them up too, to ensure that the information is up to date at the point in time when the client needs it. For more information, see [issue #369][issue-369]. * Related to the above, the `alda` client and `alda-player` processes now consider a state file to be "stale" if it hasn't been updated in 2 minutes, instead of 10 minutes. [issue-369]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/369 ## 2.0.1 (2021-07-05) * Alda will now attempt to detect if it's running in an environment (e.g. the CMD program that ships with Windows 7) that does not support ANSI escape codes to display colored text. If the environment does not appear to support ANSI escape codes, Alda will not display colored text (which is better in that case because otherwise you would see a bunch of weird-looking characters in places where there should be colored text!). * Prior to this release, it wasn't obvious that it's incorrect to enter a command like: ``` alda play my-score.alda ``` The correct way to specify a score file to read is to use the `-f, --file` option: ``` alda play -f my-score.alda ``` Instead of silently ignoring the provided file name, the Alda CLI will now print a useful error message. ## 2.0.0 (2021-06-30) Alda 2 is a from-the-ground-up rewrite, optimized for simpler architecture, better performance, and a foundation for future work to enable fun live coding features. For information about what's new, what's changed, and what to expect, check out the [Alda 2 migration guide][migration-guide]! [migration-guide]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/blob/master/doc/alda-2-migration-guide.md --- ## Earlier Versions * [1.0.0 - 1.X.X](CHANGELOG-1.X.X.md) * [0.1.0 - 0.X.X](CHANGELOG-0.X.X.md) [JustinLocke]: https://github.com/JustinLocke [UlyssesZh]: https://github.com/UlyssesZh [elyisgreat]: https://github.com/elyisgreat [ksiyuan]: https://github.com/ksiyuan [n-makim]: https://github.com/n-makim [kylewilk567]: https://github.com/kylewilk567 [Scowluga]: https://github.com/Scowluga [alan-ma]: https://github.com/alan-ma [Vanello1908]: https://github.com/Vanello1908 [De-Alchmst]: https://github.com/De-Alchmst [JakubSlacht]: https://github.com/JakubSlacht [lenianiva]: https://github.com/lenianiva [CodeForBeauty]: https://github.com/CodeForBeauty [SomedayToday]: https://github.com/SomedayToday [alda-import-blog-post]: https://blog.djy.io/musicxml-import-and-another-new-alda-features/ [midi-channel-assignment-discussion]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/discussions/447 [all-instruments]: ./examples/all-instruments.alda [midi-channel-management]: ./examples/midi-channel-management.alda [midi-channel-management-2]: ./examples/midi-channel-management-2.alda [midi-channel-attribute]: ./doc/attributes.md#midi-channel [issue-401]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/401 [issue-405]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/405 [issue-415]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/415 [issue-416]: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/416