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Sonic Pi is a code-based music creation and performance tool

sonic-pi.net

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Re: Sonic Pi is a code-based music creation and performance tool

#22

Post by delineator »

albybisy wrote: post #10

What's the advantage of a "code-based" music creation respect of the classic one musicians use?

Coding music let's you think about music composition in new ways.

I've found it easy to experiment with looping audio samples at different speeds with Sonic Pi (including backwards) and applying FX effects. Syncing the timing of loops playing is easy with Sonic Pi's `live_loop` cues.

Composing with audio samples has long traditions in magnetic tape manipulation, and later in the isolated beat loops in hip-hop.

Musique Concrète - beginning in the early 1940s - is a type of music composition that utilizes recorded sounds as raw material.

Delia Derbyshire used tape manipulation to create the original electronic realisation of the Doctor Who theme score in 1963, and in many other compositions from that decade.

Re: Sonic Pi is a code-based music creation and performance tool

#23

Post by lpil »

abetusk wrote: post #8
raverbashing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding everything you say here It takes a while to get it but it is very powerful. Docs could be a bit better (they're not bad) but in the end it is Ruby code. I would also be happier if I had a CLI because the IDE editor has (minor) issues but it also helps a lot with its integration with the rest of the system But those are minor issues in a great project. Yes it uses supercollider (too bad that API is much more…

I haven't used it but apparently there's a `sonic-pi-cli` project that has a command line interface to Sonic Pi [1]. It's unclear to me whether the Sonic Pi IDE has to be running to use it, though. I agree the documentation could be better but, in it's favor, there's a built in tutorial/examples along with built in documentation in the IDE that gets you most of the way there. I find it hard to track down what some of…

If I might be so cheeky I would suggest my Rust alternative, it is much faster and has a greater feature set -> https://github.com/lpil/sonic-pi-tool/

Re: Sonic Pi is a code-based music creation and performance tool

#25

Post by nkozyra »

This reminds me a great deal of Supercollider, which is pretty robust and time-tested.

One of the things that bothers me about Supercollider is its weird server architecture and esoteric language. I'll take Ruby over that, but these things really beg for APIs that let you hook in with other languages.

Re: Sonic Pi is a code-based music creation and performance tool

#26

Post by jimmcslim »

cube2222 wrote: post #2

Looks really nice, I'll be sure to try it out! For people interested in this, there's also a recent project https://github.com/overtone/overtone which looks similar, using Clojure though (which seems to deem itself better to live programming).

There is also Andrew Sorenson's [1] Extempore [2] which is also a Lisp.

[1] https://twitter.com/digego

[2] https://extemporelang.github.io/

Re: Sonic Pi is a code-based music creation and performance tool

#28

Post by delineator »

nkozyra wrote: post #25

This reminds me a great deal of Supercollider, which is pretty robust and time-tested. One of the things that bothers me about Supercollider is its weird server architecture and esoteric language. I'll take Ruby over that, but these things really beg for APIs that let you hook in with other languages.

In Sonic Pi you can send and receive MIDI messages and OSC messages to interoperate with external synthesiser hardware and software.

Sonic Pi comes bundled with SuperCollider. The Sonic Pi server calls out to SuperCollider to play samples, synth tones, and apply FX. See the slightly out of date diagram here for details: https://delftswa.gitbooks.io/desosa2016/content/sonicpi/chap...

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