wired magazine on Livecoding.

[Kassen]

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71248-0.html

Not bad as a introduction, have a look if this is a new phenomenen to you.

[tjt]

I consider it as much or more about "improvisation" than
"exposing the process", but since I like *both* the process
*and* improvisation, it doesn't matter to me what they call it,
I love the concept and nascent trend.

I think it actually also has a tie (in the software world)
to circuit bending in the hardware world - i.e. altering
the sound- (or video)-making machinery in realtime, as
part of the improvisational technique, *and* allowing the
audience to see the process. If you don't expose the process,
I think it's much less interesting.

...Tim...

[Kassen]

Yes, absolutely. I think the devide between "homebrew and off the shelf" instruments is a much more interesting one then "hardware v.s. software" because home build instruments themselves say something about the builder's additude towards music.

Sadly in many performances both the instrument and the process are hard to see. I'd be very much in favour of more open-ness. I would for example be very interested in performances with off-the-shelf grooveboxes that would start with all empty paterns with cameras on themusician's fingers.

Regardless of the instruments; it's always interesting to see a musician face a problem, then see how he solves it. To me Livecoding is interesting because it admits and adresses all of those issues.

[jksuperstar]

Wow, I've never seen anyone do this, but I had a dream about it the other night. In my dream, I had an instrument with a slew of buttons, which had 2 modes of operation: one as a typical note based system, the other for on-the-fly programming to generate sound, sequences, and effects.
I've had a frustrating time overcoming the strong tie of electronic music with some form of offline programming (be it sequencing, coding, or hardware hacking). I prefer live improv styles, and find it the only way I can really bring the music out of me. So, it's cool to see others doing it, and the tools they use. Thanks fo the timely post

[Afro88]

Cool how they display exactly what they're doing on a big screen... But who could make sense of it? Even if I know the language, it usually takes me at least a good few minutes to understand somone elses code. Funny how he talks about how this is much more expressive than other electronic music: "Think Pete Townshend making windmill swipes at his guitar -- how do you do that in electronic performance?"

How the hell do you do that typing on a keyboard??? It's the same problem. You can turn one knob and the music goes nuts. You could turn heaps of knobs and not much happens. He could be copying and pasting, typing furiously and not much is happening until he calls that subroutine. Or he could change 1 variable and the music shifts to 2000bpm while the distortion turns up to 11.

Even from a musical standpoint, what benefit does live coding actually have?

PS, I'm not trying to offend anyone, I just don't really understand the point of live coding in a live setting, or more specifically, why they think describing a musical idea at a "higher level" is any better than playing a guitar or playing notes and tweaking knobs live.

[Kassen]

JKS, you may be interested in this one;
http://www.pawfal.org/forums.html?page=BetaBlocker
It's a live code thing controlled by a game pad. Might be direct enough for your tastes? Might just be schreenshots of a aplha phase thing but it looks good...

Afro, I don't think anybody seriously thinks livecoding is preferable to a guitar, that's not the point. I think livecoding is partially a provocation, a thought experiment (notice how the toplap pages is decidely non-serious). The idea is that there is nothing hidden; it's the polar oposite of tape-concerts and by extention the oposite of nodding your head for 45 minutes after hitting spacebar.

Still; I think code can be very expressive, much like pluging and unplugging cables on a modular can be expressive. It might also be good to remember that people often do this stuff with languages that are build especially for talking about music in a expressive manner. My personal favourite is ChucK. ChucK is quite inefficient CPU-wise (so far....) but it's extremely compact and talking about timing or writing code loops that translate to musical loops is quite easy once you get the hang of it. ChucK also uses stuff like the word "maybe", "maybe" can mean 1 or 0 with equal chance of both (there are more advanced and traditional ways of doing that too, btw) stuff like that has the potential to result in very readable code, even for people who don't speak ChucK.

Now; I'm not quite up to livecoding standards yet but this means that as soon as I have a musical idea for some sort of tool or system I can be playing a working prototype as soon as three hours later. I made stuff in a few hours that kept me entertained for the rest of theday and night; I don't know about you but to me that sounds quite expressive. Going from a whim to a working structure on stage sounds quite exciting to me.

At the MOD(2004) Nord Modular festifal in The Hague some people were playing pre-constructed patches while others had brought a laptop and made re-programing the NM a part of their playing (doesn't work so well on the G2 because reconecting cables stops the sound). Nobody thought that was strange and you could see people looking at schreen in order to follow what was going on; I don't think that it's such a large jump from that to this.

Oh, and I'm fairly certain this stuff is MEANT to start discussions; I think people would be offended if you didn't react more then by what you wrote. :¬)

[tjt]

[Kassen]

[tjt]

[ian-s]

[Afro88]

Great, thanks for the informative responses Kassen and Tim

I was just put off by the elitest vibe I was getting from the quotes in the article, which made me question the use of live coding in a performance environment. I dislike wanky artforms where the whole point is to showboat and go "look mummy, no hands", focussed on showing off and not on the music. Live coding live came across a little like that in the article to me. Can you guys reccomend anyone who makes good music live with this method? I listened to a few bits and pieces from Slub, but wasn't too impressed...

Kassen - I can't tell you the number of times where I've wanted to see exactly what was on that laptop screen, or what those knobs are actually doing. I think it comes across as a bit embarrasing that a musician wouldn't want people to see how they're making the music coming out of the speakers. The current setup that my band has at the moment is aimed at showing the audience as much as possible. I think this is "the way"

The whole live coding thing is really cool in this respect, and it's good to know that the code is vaguely readable too. I wonder how long it will be before a live coder plays in Brisbane... hopefully not too long

[Kassen]

[Kassen]

[tjt]

[Kassen]

Ok, the square at the bottom of that page with the links?
---------
read the Audicle paper
(winner: 2004 ICMA Best Presentation Award) (presented at ICMC 2004 in Miami:
video: big | bigger )
---------

[tjt]

[Afro88]

[jksuperstar]

Afro88- Don't know if I picked up on the "elitist vibe" you speak of, but I do know emotions when I see them--people often brag about something, but it's only because they are excited and exaggeration is a form of poetry in a way, making things sound bigger is just those emotions coming across. But I think it is an exciting thing. Having the courage to code in front of an audience is akin to simply playing a live instrument in front of one, which takes most musicians a few years to do. Taking new tools in a new format in front of an audience must take a certain form of courage and excitement.

Kassen- thanks for the links. I will certainly try some of this. I am always working on some new instruments (engineering is sometimes an annoying yet persistant career/mind set!!), and have thought long about how to implement these ideals in "hardware". My dreams I spoke of where probably taking my ideas down to the lowest level, linking music making directly to programming (and skipping all the middle men in between).

[paul e.]

[Afro88]

[Kassen]

[tjt]

[Kassen]

Sounds very cool!

I should perhaps explain that what I'm working on is a sequencer; one that is very direct and brutally simple and completely build just for live improvisational use. This is what forces me to make those choices; for example, I had to admit that I realy didn't know yet what I meant by "reversing a beat". Just starting at the end of a arbitrary sample throws off the timing but then where do you start? where do you stop? The actual code was very simple but figuring which way it made musical sense took a lot of thought. This isn't sucha good place to use code-generating-code but aside from that I'm all in favour of that.

[mosc]

Tim, TJT, great link to the L-systems article. Super interesting and very musical. I haven't visited your site in a long time. Just spend some pleasant moments there. Some of the stuff in the tune trove is just great.

[TonE]