Music Information Retrieval in Live Coding: A Theoretical Framework

The work presented in this article has been partly conducted while the first author was at Georgia Tech from 2015–2017 with the support of the School of Music, the Center for Music Technology and Women in Music Tech at Georgia Tech. Another part of this research has been conducted while the first author was at Queen Mary University of London from 2017–2019 with the support of the AudioCommons project, funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 programme, research and innovation grant 688382. The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Music information retrieval (MIR) has a great potential in musical live coding because it can help the musician–programmer to make musical decisions based on audio content analysis and explore new sonorities by means of MIR techniques. The use of real-time MIR techniques can be computationally demanding and thus they have been rarely used in live coding; when they have been used, it has been with a focus on low-level feature extraction. This article surveys and discusses the potential of MIR applied to live coding at a higher musical level. We propose a conceptual framework of three categories: (1) audio repurposing, (2) audio rewiring, and (3) audio remixing. We explored the three categories in live performance through an application programming interface library written in SuperCollider, MIRLC. We found that it is still a technical challenge to use high-level features in real time, yet using rhythmic and tonal properties (midlevel features) in combination with text-based information (e.g., tags) helps to achieve a closer perceptual level centered on pitch and rhythm when using MIR in live coding. We discuss challenges and future directions of utilizing MIR approaches in the computer music field

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Live Coding

Open Access peer reviewed papers on live coding published at the 1st International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC) in Leeds

Free as in BEER: Some Explorations into Structured Improvisation Using Networked Live-Coding Systems

Much improvised music that has developed since the advent of free jazz has been concerned with the imposition of structure, often through systems of directed improvisation, or through the use of rule-based approaches (e.g., game pieces). In this article, we explore the possibility of a networked live-coding system as a structural intervention mechanism par excellence, through the discussion of two pieces from the repertoire of the Birmingham Ensemble for Electroacoustic Researc

Live Coding and Music Production as Hybrid Practice

This article discusses incorporating live coding as part of a new Foundation pathway for music production at a UK university that started in September 2022. The inclusion of live coding, using the application Sonic Pi, is situated alongside music production using a DAW, initially through the process of drum programming. The role of Sonic Pi is also to provide a means for producers to take their productions into the live performance space. This article’s contribution is in three areas. The first is to provide a short history of live coding at the current institution coupled with a longer account of my fragmented journey into live coding to provide some context. For the second discussion area, information about the foundation, its structure and how it fits into the overall degree programme is discussed. This section also includes some short code examples to illustrate the approach and links to video materials. For the last discussion area I outline an area of crossover between production and live coding which opens up a number of critical discussion points. This concerns the use of a breakbeat, what this means when used in productions, in live coding and when shipped with paid for or free software

The creative act of live coding practice in music performance

Live coding is the creative act of interactive code evaluations and online multimodal assessments. In the context of music performance, novel code evaluations are becoming part of the running program and are interrelated to acoustic sounds. Performers’ and audience ability to experience these novel auditory percepts may involuntary engage our attention. In this study, we discuss how live coding is related to auditory and motor perception and how gestural interactions may influence musical algorithmic structures. Furthermore, we examine how musical live coding practices may bring forth emergent qualities of musical gestures on potentially equivalent systems. The main contribution of this study is a preliminary conceptual framework for evaluation of live coding systems. We discuss several live coding systems which exhibit broad variations on the proposed dimensional framework and two cases which go beyond the expressive capacity of the framework

Live Coding as a Model for Cultural Practice & Cultural-Epistemological Aspects of Live Coding

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 13382 “Collaboration and learning through live coding”. Live coding is improvised interactive programming, typically to create electronic music and other digital media, done live with an audience. Our seminar was motivated by the phenomenon and experience of live coding. Our conviction was that those represent an important and broad, but seldom articulated, set of opportunities for computer science and the arts and humanities. The seminar participants included a broad range of scholars, researchers, and practitioners spanning fields from music theory to software engineering. We held live coding performances, and facilitated discussions on three main perspectives, the humanities, computing education, and software engineering. The main outcome of our seminar was better understanding of the potential of live coding for informing cross-disciplinary scholarship and practice, connecting the arts, cultural studies, and computing. The report is edited by Alan Blackwell and Alex McLean and James Noble and Julian Rohrhuber

Working Performatively with Interactive 3D Printing: An artistic practice utilising interactive programming for computational manufacturing and livecoding

This thesis explores the liminal space where personal computational art and design practices and mass-manufacturing technologies intersect. It focuses on what it could look and feel like to be a computationally-augmented, creative practitioner working with 3D printing in a more programmatic, interactive way. The major research contribution is the introduction of a future-looking practice of Interactive 3D Printing (I3DP).I3DP is articulated using the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations in terms of associated user activities and design trade-offs. Another contribution is the design, development, and analysis of a working I3DP system called LivePrinter. LivePrinter is evaluated through a series of qualitiative user studies and a personal computational art practice, including livecoding performances and 3D form-making

An AudioWorklet-based signal engine for a live coding language ecosystem

This paper reports on early advances in the design of an ecosystem for creating new live coding languages, optimal for audio synthesis, machine learning and machine listening. We present the design rationale and challenges when applying the Web Audio API, and in particular, an AudioWorklet-based solution to refactoring our digital signal processing library Maximilian.js for our high-performance signal synthesis engine. Furthermore, we contribute with a new system implementation, engineered for modern web applications, and for the live coding community to design their own idiosyncratic languages and interfaces applying our signal engine. The evaluation shows that the system runs with high reliability, efficiency and low latency

Livecode me: Live coding practice and multimodal experience

I present a practice-led research design to explore relations between listening and non-listening conditions during a month-long live coding practice. A documentation of the live coding sessions and textual data from my daily diaries are presented in a git repository. The study offers a set of observations related to musical and programming practices, an ongoing work on a visual helper and outlines issues related to solo live coding practice