Live coding the code: an environment for 'meta' live code performance

Live coding languages operate by constructing and reconstructing a program designed to create sound. These languages often have domain-specific affordances for sequencing changes over time, commonly described as patterns or sequences. Rarely are these affordances completely generic. Instead, live coders work within the constraints of their chosen language, sequencing parameters the language allows with timing that the language allows. This paper presents a novel live coding environment for the existing language lissajous that allows sequences of text input to be recorded, replayed, and manipulated just like any other musical parameter. Although initially written for the lissajous language, the presented environment is able to interface with other browser-based live coding languages such as Gibber. This paper outlines our motivations behind the development of the presented environment before discussing its creative affordances and technical implementation, concluding with a discussion on a number of evaluation metrics for such an environment and how the work can be extended in the future

Herding cats: observing live coding in the wild

After a momentous decade of live coding activities, this paper seeks to explore the practice with the aim of situating it in the history of contemporary arts and music. The article introduces several key points of investigation in live coding research and discusses some examples of how live coding practitioners engage with these points in their system design and performances. In the light of the extremely diverse manifestations of live coding activities, the problem of defining the practice is discussed, and the question raised whether live coding will actually be necessary as an independent category

Algorithms as scores: coding live music

The author discusses live coding as a new path in the evolution of the musical score. Live-coding practice accentu- ates the score, and whilst it is the perfect vehicle for the performance of algorithmic music it also transforms the compositional process itself into a live event. As a continuation of 20th-century artistic developments of the musical score, live-coding systems often embrace graphical elements and language syntaxes foreign to standard programming languages. The author presents live coding as a highly technologized artistic practice, shedding light on how non-linearity, play and generativity will become prominent in future creative media productions

The threnoscope: a musical work for live coding performance

This paper introduces a new direction in the field of artistic live coding where musical works are presented as pieces in the form of a live coding system. The system itself and the code affordances become equivalent to score system in an open musical work for strong improvisation

Improvising with the threnoscope: integrating code, hardware, GUI, network, and graphic scores

Live coding emphasises improvisation. It is an art practice that merges the act of musical composition and performance into a public act of projected writing. This paper introduces the Threnoscope system, which includes a live coding micro-language for drone-based microtonal composition. The paper discusses the aims and objectives of the system, elucidates the design decisions, and introduces in particular the code score feature present in the Threnoscope. The code score is a novel element in the design of live coding systems allowing for improvisation through a graphic score, rendering a visual representation of past and future events in a real-time performance. The paper demonstrates how the system’s methods can be mapped ad hoc to GUI- or hardware-based control

ixi lang: a SuperCollider parasite for live coding

This demo paper describes the rationale and design of the ixi lang, a live coding language built on top of SuperCollider. The paper explains why SuperCollider is used for this task, and reports on a survey conducted with users of the language. It concludes that simple and constrained systems can be useful in specific musical contexts, in particular when sketching or improvising, but that such systems can be limiting in the long run

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

Learning from Live Coding

The pace of engagement with new digital technologies in music education is proving to be slow. A key issue - and a major barrier to entry - is teacher skills and confidence to work with technology creatively. Following a concerted campaign from the technology industry, in spring 2013 the UK government agreed to introduce the subject of computing into the national curriculum for all children at the age of five. This chapter describes, interprets and theorises the digital skills and engagement with live coding performance in music

Open-source, custom interfaces and devices with live coding in participatory performance

This conference paper is available to download from the publisher’s website at the link below.This paper will discuss the use of open-source, custom interfaces and live coding in artworks and performance practices, using emerging devices that focus on revealing hidden, intimate and sensuous code of the body for manipulation and play. This paper review the new landscape of open-source artworks, with recent examples of such artworks, as well as one by the author, resulting in a new performance aesthetic that uses 'hacked' commercial, mobile and gaming devices for live coding, performance and interactive artworks. It discusses how dancers, live artists, musicians and others are participating in the DIY and 'Maker' movement, to create exciting wearable electronics and mobile applications for performance enhancement. The author will consider the possibilities of playful, expressive, gestural, and live coding, as well as using the DIY Maker ethos in multi-sensory particpatory performances with new devices. The author's own artistic research has involved re-combinatory practices and hybridisations of participatory performance, mobile media, wearable biofeedback sensors and live database interaction in a recent performance project MINDtouch. Her new collaborative work Hacking the Body, is about making participatory performances and interactive dance pieces that expose 'code' of the inner body