7 ms·

Sonic Pi: Compose electronic music with code

krylon 8y ago
Aaah, I have been meaning to play around with this program for a few years now, but I never get around to it. The idea, though, is really, really cool!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ponytech 8y ago
How hard would it be to embed this into an other app?
- pdpi 8y ago
  Sonic Pi is based on Supercollider for sound synthesis, with a ruby server that controls it, and all of this put in a Qt GUI. Either Supercollider or the Ruby server should be plenty easy to embed
  - moomin 8y ago
    There’s Erlang in there as well...
eggy 8y ago
Sonic Pi is pretty cool. I really liked Overtone because I like LISPs, so I have chosen Extempore to do my electronic composing [1]. I first started with CM (Common Music), which also has a one-click download for Linux, Mac and Windows. It also has somewhat of an IDE called Grace, "Grace (Graphical Realtime Algorithmic Composition Environment) a drag-and-drop, cross-platform app implemented in JUCE (C++) and S7 Scheme." [2] The birds example is amazing! They build up a very real-sounding bird call from scratch. [1] https://extemporelang.github.io/ [2] http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/
thisismitch 8y ago
Prior to my career as a software engineer, I attended RubyConf (2015, San Antonio) and watched a presentation about making music with Sonic Pi. That night, I made this rendition of "Corridors of Time" from Chrono Trigger: https://gist.github.com/thisismitch/be9287c80903cad151fe https://gist.github.com/thisismitch/be9287c80903cad151fe It took me way longer than I'd like to admit! Enjoy! Edit: Here's an MP3 export of it https://soundcloud.com/mitchell-anicas-project/corridors-of-code https://soundcloud.com/mitchell-anicas-project/corridors-of-... for easier listening.
- citrusui 8y ago
  Love the Chrono Trigger OST. Interestingly enough, someone made a remix of this song back in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiy_wuncQ7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiy_wuncQ7s
- ryanisnan 8y ago
  Well done! Was this project one of your introductions into programming?
  - thisismitch 8y ago
    Not exactly—I actually got a CS degree back in 2005 but got into sysadmin work. I started at DigitalOcean as a technical writer (tutorials) in 2014 then, after 18 months of writing, brushed up on my skills by working on side projects and pairing weekly with one of DO’s engineering managers.
blubb-fish 8y ago
i am very excited by the idea to create music by means of programming. but it seems that there isn't even a single project with an active community. supercollider seems to be the most popular with regard to GitHub stats. Sonic pi seems to be the most recent endeavor in this area. but it doesn't offer any deb-packages. compiling for Debian/Ubuntu seems to be not documented. my impression is that this is coming up every couple of years but nobody so far succeeded at actually producing a system that gains meaningful popularity. not to mention how difficult it was too compile/set up the software for the various projects i have tried. another problem is that very few YouTube tutorials showcase rythms and melodies going beyond something resembling a ping pong match on speed. would love to hear your opinion.
- ckocagil 8y ago
  There's also Tidal: https://tidalcycles.org/ https://tidalcycles.org/ Here's a live coding video from its front page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLybSFICi4UliK17U6rxPneXAyxvmGAe5T&v=smQOiFt8e4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLybSFICi4UliK17U6rxPneXA...
- merongivian 8y ago
  Yea thats a problem for all of the most popular livecoding libs (tidal and sonic pi depend on supercollider). One alternative is to use js (gibber.js) and doing livecoding in the browser. I've been playing with the idea of creating this lib that uses ruby and compiles to js under the hood: https://github.com/merongivian/negasonic https://github.com/merongivian/negasonic, one drawback is performance though
  - jtms 8y ago
    Having tried both Gibber.js and Tone.js I would give the edge to Tone.js - less crackles and pops and generally more a more stable bridge to the Web Audio Api. Give it a look if you like.
    - merongivian 8y ago
      yes, Im actually using Tone.js for my library, indeed is great but still, is web audio api (everything sounds like gameboy or snes :)), its fun though
exabrial 8y ago
I took a shot at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPUgcUUB298 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPUgcUUB298
newnewpdro 8y ago
Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChucK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChucK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rpk461T6l4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rpk461T6l4
beamatronic 8y ago
Does anyone remember Instant Music on the Amiga?
Gormisdomai 8y ago
I played with sonicpi for a while and it was fun until I hit the limitations of my severely lacking music theory knowledge. I feel like all the best tutorials are written for people who are good with music but need to learn to code. Anyone out there have any good resources for using sonicpi to learn more music theory as a coder?
salimmadjd 8y ago
At first glance this looks very cool. There is a lot of good documentations and it seems like a powerful set of libraries around it to make something very neat. BUT...to put my PM hat on, I'm not sure who is the target audience here? A - musicians who want to compose music with code. B - people who want to learn programming by having fun with music creation. C - programmers who want to learn music theory. If the intention is a fun vehicle to to teach programming, then I think there are better ways. I looked thought the samples and I think as a kid I would get tired very quickly. There are so many function calls to learn. Right away I have to understand the concept of random and what it does. I think if the idea is to empower musicians, this seems like a lot of work to create music. At the end, you have to know some music principle and already understand a lot of different programming concepts to actually do anything. This combination makes doing programming dependent on knowing music theory and creating music knowing a lot of programming and exploring all the different functions and libraries to then apply your music theory to. To me it would be frustrating. And for musicians who I guess, can potentially create some sounds that might be difficult with existing tools, just to hard to do. It would have been far better to have a simple 2D game board (tanks, robots, etc. I know it's been done) as a programing tool than inside a complex world of music theory. Or at least make the libraries not dependent on music theory and provided some higher level presets with built in abstractions. Example: loop song(type: techno_beat, length:300) (do some stuff here) end_loop Make the user feel like superhuman musicians.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  I would say it is for musicians who want to compose music with code. When you delve into the world of electronic music, there are quite a few using such tools, doing live coding performances on their concerts.
  - darpa_escapee 8y ago
    For those that are interested, a few of these projects are: csound, Pure Data and Overtone. I believe there are commercial options, as well, but I'm not familiar with them.
max_ 8y ago
Related project here https://naivesound.com/glitch-orig/#t*(42%26t%3E%3E10) https://naivesound.com/glitch-orig/#t*(42%26t%3E%3E10)
pmoriarty 8y ago
I used to program music (algorithmic composition) using Common Music.[1] It allowed me to program in my language of choice, Scheme. Unfortunately, last time I tried a few years ago, I couldn't get it to compile. Does anyone know if there's another good Scheme alternative to it that doesn't have a mountain of dependencies? [1] - http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/ http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/
boucaron 8y ago
It is pretty neat and the main coder is doing pretty cool demos. It is not easy to master it, it reminds me the cool time of modules on Amiga and its magic woaaa effect.
marcelr 8y ago
Sonic pi is great, I used it live as part of a noise / ambient music project I do. It really feels like just using a DAW but having more control and much faster. Unfortunately I fell off it, because I struggled with Linux audio so much and just gave up at some point. But it's good fun and more than a toy for sure.
greptastic 8y ago
What I'd like to see (or find, perhaps it's out there) is something that's based more on triggering loops and samples (with optional processing) as opposed to synthesis. Earsketch sort of looks like what I'm looking for, but it's web only and I can't much get it to run?
dpeck 8y ago
Sonic Pi is awesome, my son has a great time going through the great tutorial and riffing on the examples a bit. But when we were done with the tutorial I was (and still am) a bit lost as to where to go next. I don’t have any understanding of music theory and Sonic Pi seems like a great way to learn the basics of it, but I couldn’t find anything that occupied that next step after the tutorial.

Aaah, I have been meaning to play around with this program for a few years now, but I never get around to it. The idea, though, is really, really cool!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ponytech 8y ago

How hard would it be to embed this into an other app?

pdpi 8y ago
Sonic Pi is based on Supercollider for sound synthesis, with a ruby server that controls it, and all of this put in a Qt GUI. Either Supercollider or the Ruby server should be plenty easy to embed
- moomin 8y ago
  There’s Erlang in there as well...

eggy 8y ago

Sonic Pi is pretty cool. I really liked Overtone because I like LISPs, so I have chosen Extempore to do my electronic composing [1]. I first started with CM (Common Music), which also has a one-click download for Linux, Mac and Windows. It also has somewhat of an IDE called Grace, "Grace (Graphical Realtime Algorithmic Composition Environment) a drag-and-drop, cross-platform app implemented in JUCE (C++) and S7 Scheme." [2] The birds example is amazing! They build up a very real-sounding bird call from scratch. [1] https://extemporelang.github.io/ [2] http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/

thisismitch 8y ago

Prior to my career as a software engineer, I attended RubyConf (2015, San Antonio) and watched a presentation about making music with Sonic Pi. That night, I made this rendition of "Corridors of Time" from Chrono Trigger: https://gist.github.com/thisismitch/be9287c80903cad151fe https://gist.github.com/thisismitch/be9287c80903cad151fe It took me way longer than I'd like to admit! Enjoy! Edit: Here's an MP3 export of it https://soundcloud.com/mitchell-anicas-project/corridors-of-code https://soundcloud.com/mitchell-anicas-project/corridors-of-... for easier listening.

citrusui 8y ago
Love the Chrono Trigger OST. Interestingly enough, someone made a remix of this song back in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiy_wuncQ7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiy_wuncQ7s
ryanisnan 8y ago
Well done! Was this project one of your introductions into programming?
- thisismitch 8y ago
  Not exactly—I actually got a CS degree back in 2005 but got into sysadmin work. I started at DigitalOcean as a technical writer (tutorials) in 2014 then, after 18 months of writing, brushed up on my skills by working on side projects and pairing weekly with one of DO’s engineering managers.

blubb-fish 8y ago

i am very excited by the idea to create music by means of programming. but it seems that there isn't even a single project with an active community. supercollider seems to be the most popular with regard to GitHub stats. Sonic pi seems to be the most recent endeavor in this area. but it doesn't offer any deb-packages. compiling for Debian/Ubuntu seems to be not documented. my impression is that this is coming up every couple of years but nobody so far succeeded at actually producing a system that gains meaningful popularity. not to mention how difficult it was too compile/set up the software for the various projects i have tried. another problem is that very few YouTube tutorials showcase rythms and melodies going beyond something resembling a ping pong match on speed. would love to hear your opinion.

ckocagil 8y ago
There's also Tidal: https://tidalcycles.org/ https://tidalcycles.org/ Here's a live coding video from its front page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLybSFICi4UliK17U6rxPneXAyxvmGAe5T&v=smQOiFt8e4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLybSFICi4UliK17U6rxPneXA...
merongivian 8y ago
Yea thats a problem for all of the most popular livecoding libs (tidal and sonic pi depend on supercollider). One alternative is to use js (gibber.js) and doing livecoding in the browser. I've been playing with the idea of creating this lib that uses ruby and compiles to js under the hood: https://github.com/merongivian/negasonic https://github.com/merongivian/negasonic, one drawback is performance though
- jtms 8y ago
  Having tried both Gibber.js and Tone.js I would give the edge to Tone.js - less crackles and pops and generally more a more stable bridge to the Web Audio Api. Give it a look if you like.
  - merongivian 8y ago
    yes, Im actually using Tone.js for my library, indeed is great but still, is web audio api (everything sounds like gameboy or snes :)), its fun though

exabrial 8y ago

I took a shot at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPUgcUUB298 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPUgcUUB298

newnewpdro 8y ago

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChucK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChucK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rpk461T6l4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rpk461T6l4

beamatronic 8y ago

Does anyone remember Instant Music on the Amiga?

Gormisdomai 8y ago

I played with sonicpi for a while and it was fun until I hit the limitations of my severely lacking music theory knowledge. I feel like all the best tutorials are written for people who are good with music but need to learn to code. Anyone out there have any good resources for using sonicpi to learn more music theory as a coder?

salimmadjd 8y ago

At first glance this looks very cool. There is a lot of good documentations and it seems like a powerful set of libraries around it to make something very neat. BUT...to put my PM hat on, I'm not sure who is the target audience here? A - musicians who want to compose music with code. B - people who want to learn programming by having fun with music creation. C - programmers who want to learn music theory. If the intention is a fun vehicle to to teach programming, then I think there are better ways. I looked thought the samples and I think as a kid I would get tired very quickly. There are so many function calls to learn. Right away I have to understand the concept of random and what it does. I think if the idea is to empower musicians, this seems like a lot of work to create music. At the end, you have to know some music principle and already understand a lot of different programming concepts to actually do anything. This combination makes doing programming dependent on knowing music theory and creating music knowing a lot of programming and exploring all the different functions and libraries to then apply your music theory to. To me it would be frustrating. And for musicians who I guess, can potentially create some sounds that might be difficult with existing tools, just to hard to do. It would have been far better to have a simple 2D game board (tanks, robots, etc. I know it's been done) as a programing tool than inside a complex world of music theory. Or at least make the libraries not dependent on music theory and provided some higher level presets with built in abstractions. Example: loop song(type: techno_beat, length:300) (do some stuff here) end_loop Make the user feel like superhuman musicians.

pjmlp 8y ago
I would say it is for musicians who want to compose music with code. When you delve into the world of electronic music, there are quite a few using such tools, doing live coding performances on their concerts.
- darpa_escapee 8y ago
  For those that are interested, a few of these projects are: csound, Pure Data and Overtone. I believe there are commercial options, as well, but I'm not familiar with them.

max_ 8y ago

Related project here https://naivesound.com/glitch-orig/#t*(42%26t%3E%3E10) https://naivesound.com/glitch-orig/#t*(42%26t%3E%3E10)

pmoriarty 8y ago

I used to program music (algorithmic composition) using Common Music.[1] It allowed me to program in my language of choice, Scheme. Unfortunately, last time I tried a few years ago, I couldn't get it to compile. Does anyone know if there's another good Scheme alternative to it that doesn't have a mountain of dependencies? [1] - http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/ http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/

boucaron 8y ago

It is pretty neat and the main coder is doing pretty cool demos. It is not easy to master it, it reminds me the cool time of modules on Amiga and its magic woaaa effect.

marcelr 8y ago

Sonic pi is great, I used it live as part of a noise / ambient music project I do. It really feels like just using a DAW but having more control and much faster. Unfortunately I fell off it, because I struggled with Linux audio so much and just gave up at some point. But it's good fun and more than a toy for sure.

greptastic 8y ago

What I'd like to see (or find, perhaps it's out there) is something that's based more on triggering loops and samples (with optional processing) as opposed to synthesis. Earsketch sort of looks like what I'm looking for, but it's web only and I can't much get it to run?

dpeck 8y ago

Sonic Pi is awesome, my son has a great time going through the great tutorial and riffing on the examples a bit. But when we were done with the tutorial I was (and still am) a bit lost as to where to go next. I don’t have any understanding of music theory and Sonic Pi seems like a great way to learn the basics of it, but I couldn’t find anything that occupied that next step after the tutorial.