Can anyone point me in the direction of writing on the sounds and sonic-ness of live coding?
Hmm sounds and sonic-ness like in, the sonic qualities ? Common stylistic elements, or rather from a perceptional point of view ?
Interested in either—any kinds of discussion around the sound as opposed to the technologies and the communities/audiences.
At some point a while ago I was asking myself the question what sound is specific to live coding, as in, could I listen to some music and hear that it’s live coding without knowing beforehand.
At that time, I couldn’t really say that was true, and was a bit disappointed. Like, what is the point if you re-create something that’s already there sound-wise, just in a slightly geekier, and often less dynamic, manner?
Nowadays I think different about it, and I’m not sure if that’s due to my increased experience, technological advancements, or a generally refined practice.
Anyway, nowadays live coded music sounds less stiff, less deterministic, and often quite organic to me. I’m not sure if there’s the one sound of live coding, but each language seems to have a somewhat distinct sound.
It’s fairly easy to recognize a TidalCycles set (especially a beginner set) as such. This might be partly due to the popular dirt samples, but also it’d be super tedious to create similar pattern manipulations in, say FL Studio.
The possibility to include non-deterministic elements allows for different ways of creating musical variations, and thus eventually musical forms. Live coders rarely seem to think in song structures, but neither do they concatenate musical material in the way DJs do.
Just my random thoughts on this …
Hey thanks for your reflections on your experiences with live coding and sound. So often we hear the qualities of a mode of playing sounds—the guitars; classic synthesizers; Ableton. I’m wondering if people have written about the sounds of Algorave from more perspectives—if we are focusing on how it sounds through the language then we are missing lots of other important factors like environment/scenario/time/performers/audiences