SuperCollider's Event system dispatches sound by type, making note, rest, group, and bus events uniform

An Event in SuperCollider is a special dictionary with keys like \type, \instrument, \freq, \amp, \sustain. Calling .play on an event dispatches it according to its \type: \note creates a Synth, \rest does nothing but advances time, \group creates a group node, \off sends a release message. Pbind produces event streams of this type. This uniformity lets Patterns control all aspects of synthesis through one interface. Default values are looked up from Event.default if not provided. The Event prototype chain means you can override defaults without touching the base Event.

Examples

(type: \note, instrument: ‘sine’, freq: 400, amp: 0.1, sustain: 2).play; (type: \off, id: 2, lag: 3).play;

Assessment

Write a Pbind that plays every other event as a rest. Inspect the resulting Event dictionary with .postln and identify which keys come from defaults vs. the pattern.