Archives

Live at Festival of the Mind 2024

Posted on 4th October 2024 in Gigs, Releases

A live recording captured in the Spiegeltent at Festival Of The Mind 2024 in Sheffield. Available to download for free.

The music was produced entirely in custom software developed by Sheffield University, and designed to introduce the concepts of coding, while allowing you to program music. The web-based software is free to use and includes tutorials and our demos.

Read more about the project here:
https://bleep.sheffield.ac.uk/artist/seclusion

Download the live recording at:
Bandcamp
DustStore.com

Many thanks to Guy, Sam, Nikki, Chris and Nick.

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!

Techno Music Programming – Festival of the Mind 2024

Posted on 3rd September 2024 in Gigs, News, Studio & Production

On the 21st of September 2024, we’ll be joining with the School of Computer Science at Sheffield University for a couple of special music programming events, all as part of Festival of the Mind 2024.

Techno Music Programming Masterclass – The Diamond
This free 2-hour workshop will explore the basics of computer programming through the lens of techno music creation. Led by renowned musician and live coding expert Dr Sam Aaron, participants will use software specifically developed for this workshop, teaching the basics of coding and exploring music composition. We’ll be there to share our knowledge of techno music production, sharing our own code and examples to illustrate. Places are very limited and can be reserved at:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk

Techno Music Programming Showcase – Spiegeltent
At 5pm we’ll head down to the Spiegeltent in Barkers Pool where we’ll introduce the concepts of live music coding, demonstrate the unique software and perform some of the music that we’ve created, including pieces from our new Seclusion EP. The event is free but the Spiegeltent has limited space, so get down early to get yourself a place.

Full details for all of the events at this year’s Festival of the Mind can be found at:
https://festivalofthemind.sheffield.ac.uk/2024/