If you're interested in live coding, feel free to try Glicol (<a href="https://glicol.org" rel="nofollow">https://glicol.org</a>).<p>There's also TidalCycles. I have to praise the ability of Haskell and Ruby in creating DSLs<p>For Glicol, my thoughts on language design are focused on a synth-inspired syntax, speed for composition, and convenience of sound design. The idea is to design a DSL that draws from previous programming habits but isn't confined to existing languages.
Some years ago I found a video on YouTube by someone who used Sonic Pi to re-create the THX Deep Note.
That video was awesome because he didn't initially explain what he was going to do. Je started by creating a single "note" of the sound but called it a bee. Then he tweaked the sound of the bee a bit here and there, showed what it sounds like, and in the end he was like "and now let's just create a couple hundred of these bees and hear what it sounds like in a beehive", and when he did that the Deep Note emerged.<p>I loved that video but I have since been unable to find it again. If anyone has a link to that video, please share
I’ve had the chance to watch Sam Aaron (Sonic Pi’s father) doing a live performance with Sonic Pi several years ago.<p>He was impressive. The music was evolving each time he changed code in live. And it was good.
If you're interested in a couple of examples of artists that use Sonic Pi, I found out about DJ_Dave [1] a while back and think her stuff is a great example of a talented, competent musician using the tool well. She did an AMA [2] on Reddit a while back and I believe has some stuff up on GitHub [3]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiQHclg_648" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiQHclg_648</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/audius/comments/19dxmy6/hey_audius_333_im_dj_dave_im_a_live_code_artist/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/audius/comments/19dxmy6/hey_audius_...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/algorave-dave">https://github.com/algorave-dave</a>
Speaking as a Ruby developer, this is very cool. I could see using this for algorithmically generated music and that would be neat. (Speaking of which, I was meaning to make our noisy git repository events into some kind of algorithmic music — this would be good for that.)*<p>But speaking as a musician with lots of keyboard instruments — if I were trying to compose a piece of music, I'm not really sure why I would compose musical sequences with Ruby when I can play them with a MIDI keyboard, or record an acoustic instrument and loop it. I see that you <i>can</i> input anything you like with the Ruby DSL, but it's not a great UX compared to a piano keyboard.<p>I guess to put it another way — I would not use this to replace what I use Logic for. But that's just me.<p>* see also <a href="http://listen.hatnote.com/" rel="nofollow">http://listen.hatnote.com/</a>
I was just thinking about Sonic Pi the other day and watched a few videos online. I only ever played with it briefly years ago(busted out the classic Old MacDonald and Hot Cross Buns jams).
For a different take (not live) at programming music check scamp for python[0]. The author also has a bunch of videos in youtube with things he does with it, like this Fourier Elise video[1].<p>[0] <a href="http://scamp.marcevanstein.com/" rel="nofollow">http://scamp.marcevanstein.com/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq32bIud3OM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq32bIud3OM</a>
Shoutout to alsoknownasrox, my favorite Sonic Pi livecoder!<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXIvXrBQFkE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXIvXrBQFkE</a>
I wish this was available as a flatpak. There are just toooo many dependencies that need to be custom install to install Sonic Pi. Packaging it for distro will be a nightmare.<p>Flatpak to the rescue.