Live Coding Software For Music

Posted on 24th September 2024 in Gigs, News, Studio & Production

In September 2024 we took part in a Live Coding Workshop and Showcase at the Festival of the Mind 2024 in Sheffield. Together with the School of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield, we spent the afternoon making bleeps with code, before heading out for a live demo at the Spiegeltent in the city centre.

And now, the software is publicly accessible and free to use, along with the tutorials and a set of music demos from us:
https://bleep.sheffield.ac.uk/artist/seclusion

It’s a web-based live coding environment, designed for generating noise and music, and it’s intended to introduce the basics of coding, while making some interesting noises. It’s not as scary as it sounds, the simplified code lets you jump straight in and make some noise with just a single line of code. The tutorials will guide you through the basics, so it shouldn’t matter whether or not you have any coding experience.

This system and the code used is based on Sam Aaron’s Sonic Pi project, only now, it’s entirely web-based. It’s very much a work-in-progress, so may be a little rough in places, but that shouldn’t stop you getting stuck in.

And as you might have noticed, we’ve avoided referring to the software by name, mainly because it hasn’t actually got one. All suggestions welcome!

The demos we produced for the festival are at:
https://bleep.sheffield.ac.uk/artist/seclusion

The tutorials created for the workshop can be accessed via:
https://bleep.sheffield.ac.uk/artist/tbd

Download the tutorial PDF:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1glIlPp00SJi_gMVX8bZ5fwLNumnrlVyy/view?usp=drive_link

Want to dig deeper? More information is available in the Wiki, although this too is a work-in-progress:
https://github.com/guyjbrown/bleepmanual/wiki

Want to start from a blank project?
https://bleep.sheffield.ac.uk/user

Let us know what you get up to!

Tags: 2024, Bleep, Festival of the Mind, Sheffield, Sheffield University