Executing the script

    tao new

Tao should respond with the following messages in the shell window:

    ========================================
    |     Tao (c) 1996-99 Mark Pearson     |
    | Sound Synthesis with Physical Models |
    ========================================

    Processing new.tao
    Making new.exe
    Executing new.exe

    Sample rate=44100 KHz
    Score duration=20 seconds                

You should then see the instrument visualisation window open. It should look something like the following:

When the visualisation window opens Tao is initially in pause mode. To get it out of this mode you should press the right cursor key once. You can pause the whole system again by pressing the left cursor key at any point in time. If you repeatedly press the right cursor key you will see that the animation begins to move more and more rapidly although eventually it becomes less smooth. If you now repeatedly press the left cursor key, the animation slows down again and becomes smoother.

The reason for this is that it is possible to change the frequency with which the visualisation window is updated. Tao has a synthesis engine which keeps track of all the instruments and devices created in a script, and carries out all the calculations involved in bringing them to life. It also has a graphics engine which is responsible for displaying the instruments and devices in the visualisation window. Pressing the left and right cursor keys simply changes how frequently the graphics engine visualises what is going on inside the synthesis engine. Displaying the instruments and devices on every tick of the synthesis engine leads to smooth animations but at the expense of making the whole system slow down. Conversely, displaying the instruments less frequently gives a bigger slice of the processing power over to the synthesis engine at the expense of producing more jerky animations.

Now supposing you want to run a performance at maximum efficiency, without the overhead of the graphics window. When executing a script for the first time you can simply hit the right cursor key to set the synthesis engine in motion, and then mimimise the graphics window. This means that all the computational resources available will be put into the synthesis itself, until the graphics window is restored.