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Sonic Pi – The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone

sonic-pi.net

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Re: Sonic Pi – The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone

#11

Post by 0atman »

simongray wrote: post #6
djaychela wrote: post #4

I've spent some time trying to work with Sonic Pi, but I've really struggled with the syntax, finding it difficult to work with. I'm fluent in Python but find the use of colons is the real sticking point. If anyone's got any suggestions, or can point to a python version of the same (I spent a fair bit of time working with FoxDot which does use python so it made more sense to me) it'd be appreciated - this is somethin…

> I'm fluent in Python but find the use of colons is the real sticking point. The you'd probably have hated its predecessor which was all about the parentheses: https://overtone.github.io/ It's too bad that superficial stuff like which characters you need to type is holding you back. Getting used to Ruby when you're familiar with Python is no big deal. I would just stick with it

Agreed! OP: Do you think Ruby is the last language you'll have to learn? ;-) Stick with it, sonic-pi is worth it!

Re: Sonic Pi – The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone

#12

Post by lpil »

bodge5000 wrote: post #10

Have been trying to get into live coding, mostly with Supercollider but Sonic-Pi looks nice as well (certainly less verbose). On the composition side of things it seems to be fantastic, I've used a lot of Renoise and this way of doing things just feels like a more direct way of what I was trying to do there, really nice. The big drawback for me so far has been sound design. Actually building your own synths can be di…

I think it's not really intended for synth design and complex sound design, it's more akin to an instrument than a DAW. If you read the source code for Sonic Pi you'll see that most the synths are implemented in SuperCollider language or Clojure using the Overtone library, not Ruby/Sonic Pi.

Re: Sonic Pi – The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone

#14

Post by pvinis »

djaychela wrote: post #3
pvinis wrote: post #2

I recently was trying this again, also searching online for people using it, and I could only find club music made with it, which made me just give up on trying further. I wish there were some YouTube channel what made nice music with sonicpi or similar.

Can you give a better definition than nice music? I think one reason why tools like this lead to creation of dance music is that the structures are readily created using them, and in addition they tend to make synth and sample sounds which are often heard in dance... It's pretty quick to code a 4 on the floor dance beat, but programming Gene Krupa will be much more challenging!

"nice music" I mean music that is not repeating with a period of less that 8 seconds. I don't care for a 3-loop made using code. I know it can be done, and I know it's easy to do compared to other ways. I wanna see if it's possible to use code as an real instrument.

Yes, a keyboard and a looper can be used for club music. Same for sonicpi. But a keyboard can be used to play/compose classical, or even "The Office" intro. Can sonicpi be used for that? That's what I wanna see.

Re: Sonic Pi – The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone

#16

Post by rvieira »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #9

See also: https://supercollider.github.io/ Supercollider is another real time audio synthesis tool.

Sonic Pi is a Ruby DSL for SuperCollider.

Sonic Pi is awesome, but ike all DSLs, while making simple things easy it has its limitations.

Re: Sonic Pi – The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone

#17

Post by cies »

This project is like magic, though really hard to install on it's own. Hence the approach that is advised is to run it on a Rasberry Pi (something like a physical docker container). This project duct-tapes so many cool technologies together that the whole setup become quite brittle: you need the exact versions of all dependencies + patches + wiring/configs and only then it works.

It's very complete: the "language" (Ruby with some libs), IDE, sound generation... It truly comes with batteries included.

I tried to put this project in a docker container (before snap and flatpak were all the rage; I've a bit of experience with snap and sure it did cause rage): that is a docker container that should be able to draw an X11 window in the host OSes X11 server. This to allow the project to be run with all its dependencies included. Sadly I failed.

Re: Sonic Pi – The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone

#18

Post by BuboBubo »

Everything live coding related is worth taking a look: https://github.com/toplap/awesome-livecoding

Live coding is how I learned to program and I am so glad that this type of computer music performance exists. I am currently doing my PhD on the topic! Programming as a performative act, with its own culture and music sub-genres. For those interested in helping / taking a look, I am currently trying to hack my own live coding environment based on Python asyncio mechanisms: https://github.com/Bubobubobubobubo/sardine I am a bit shy about it because I am light years behind the level of the projects that are posted on HN and that keep me inspired. I've taught myself how to do this basically by live coding ... a lot, with friends in France! Learning a bit of CS because of music.

EDIT: Sonic Pi is the environment that I used to learn the basics of programming!

Re: Sonic Pi – The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone

#19

Post by soulofmischief »

BuboBubo wrote: post #18

Everything live coding related is worth taking a look: https://github.com/toplap/awesome-livecoding Live coding is how I learned to program and I am so glad that this type of computer music performance exists. I am currently doing my PhD on the topic! Programming as a performative act, with its own culture and music sub-genres. For those interested in helping / taking a look, I am currently trying to hack my own live…

What are your thoughts / experience with Extempore? https://extemporelang.github.io/
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