strudel VS stenophone

Interesting!

Similar note-based expression can be found on TidalCycles/Strudel. although it's not valid MIDI format anymore, you can use notation like c4, f3, and make them as "pattern". Samples are also supported in the same manner:

https://strudel.cc/

And in my project Glicol, I use only numbers in the seq node. So 60 means middle C. Underscore means rest.

https://glicol.org/

TidalCycles doesn't. And you can try it online without installing anything.

https://strudel.cc/

Try evaluating `d1 $ s "bd sn"` to get a bass drum-snare drum rhythm going. Then `d1 $ s "bd*2 sn"` to kick the bass drum twice each loop instead of once. It can be extremely intuitive.

An easy way to experiment with this is via Strudel[1], a JS port that plays in-browser (annoyingly, works better with Chrome than Safari.)

[1] https://strudel.tidalcycles.org

It's recently gotten a great deal easier to play with thanks to Strudel, a JS variant.

Strudel REPL: https://strudel.tidalcycles.org/

One interesting feature of Tidalcycles is Euclidean Sequences, where various 'natural' ways of distributing X notes over Y durations are easily expressed:

It has a modular design so you can pick together different pieces to build into your project, if you're happy with AGPL: https://github.com/tidalcycles/strudel/

Personally I've never been attracted to writing SuperCollider code, especially not in a live context, largely due to its syntax, but also its complexity.

So-called 'visual programming languages' I don't find interesting for performance, since they rely on the mouse for program manipulation.

For me Tidal's mini-notation is the greatest music sequencing tool of all time, bar none. Every time someone shows me a sequencer I can usually write the Tidal code in my head on the spot, and save $1000s on redundant hardware. It could only be beaten by being turned into a physical instrument, something I've tried to do in the past: https://github.com/jarmitage/Stenophone.

That being said, even though I'm evidently a big Tidal fan I would still call attention to ICLC and HLCI, where amazingly creative and interesting new systems and approaches are being proposed every year:

https://iclc.toplap.org/

https://hybrid-livecode.pubpub.org/

Mirabai Knight's talk about this is one of my all time faves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g

Inspired me to try to create a live coding musical instrument based on it: https://github.com/jarmitage/stenophone / https://iclc.toplap.org/2017/cameraReady/stenophone_camready...