@pjmlp thanks for clarifying. I had no idea there was such a thing.

@darpa_escapee - thanks for guiding me into that rabbit hole. Csound looked the most promising to me. Pure Data needs more screenshot and samples, the site was very hard for me to dive through and Overtone Clojure it's cool. Wanted to learn that at one point, but I'm sticking first with learning Haskell.

Max/MSP is a popular one, basically a fleshed-out commercial version of Pure Data. As somebody with a background in procedural and OO programming, I personally find that graphical approach immensely frustrating, but I’ve known lots of people to whom it speaks.

For a more code-like experience, SuperCollider seems pretty fun, though I haven’t gotten deep into it. ChucK (http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu) is another neat option, if you really want to feel like you’re controlling every sample that goes by.

And of course supercollider which is what overtone and sonicpi are based on. That's the sound engine