supercollider VS FoxDot

Link to the audio programming language / server they're using in the article: https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider

For the intrepid, especially those annoyed with the purported input-sluggishness of musescore et al, an interesting text-based alternative is LilyPond https://lilypond.org/

My dad wrote an opera using LilyPond in vim, though I believe these days he's actually doing more with supercollider, which skips sheetmusic and goes right to sounds: https://supercollider.github.io/

Weirdly enough,I got into programming through music. I got into making experimental electronic music and ended up learning SuperCollider. Figured I’d have to get a real job at some point and I liked learning Supercollider enough that I figured I should try to go back to school and learn some more useful programming languages

So you’re wondering what would making music with code look like? The tools I’m familiar with are TidalCycles, Sonic Pi, and SuperCollider. I’m having a hard time describing what it’s like to make music with tools like these so here’s a video of a performance. One person is live coding the music and the other is live coding the visuals. I think it’s super cool how the music is improvised and built over time by layering commands. Some keywords you could search to see more examples would be Algorave and Livecoding.

So far mostly Vim (not for coding, just writing so far), NetHack, Firefox, and mpd and ncmpcpp. Also mpv occasionally. I'm planning on installing SuperCollider at some point too and getting back into that, but that shouldn't be too heavy either.

I would say no there aren't any sample packs for this kind of stuff because this entire scene developed around using a samplers and sampling as well as some computer tools like Max/Msp, SuperCollider, Recycle, Cool Edit Pro and some other stuff I am quite likely forgetting at the moment. Also you might look at some of the IRCAM stuff too.

Sonic pi is basically a wrapper for the amazing language Supercollider (https://supercollider.github.io/). I highly recommend watching Eli Fieldsteel's excellent tutorials on it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzsOOiJ_p4&list=PLPYzvS8A_rTaNDweXe6PX4CXSGq4iEWYC) to see some of what its capable of (I think he is almost a finished a new book on it as well).

Thanks! I used a python library called Foxdot: https://foxdot.org/

My comment won't really be helpful, but it feels like an interesting question to spitball some thoughts...

1. The domain is super important for children's programming. Logo started out doing list processing and word-based games and kids just weren't that into it; it's the turtle that really made it feel real and exciting. Scratch similarly has a really concrete and fun domain (moving sprites). The exact things that good learning environments have (lots of visuals and movement) don't seem very fun when you are blind (though maybe there's ways to experience that output that I'm not aware of).

2. My natural intuition is that voice and music are fun. Maybe there's tactile things I am unaware of. Maybe Lego Mindstorms?

3. FoxDot is a really fun programming environment for creating live music: https://github.com/Qirky/FoxDot – it's very textual, and I'm not sure how easy that is (especially if you are trying to interact while the music is playing). It's based on Supercollider: https://supercollider.github.io/ – it's possible there's other more accessible frontends for Supercollider.

4. Here's something someone did with Supercollider: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-technology-set-up-a-...

5. That reminds me of Makey Makey, which is very tactile and very affordable. But it's basically just an input device. https://makeymakey.com/ – really you can't go wrong getting that and hooking it up to a sound player or having the kid find new and inventive ways to create tactile frontends to it. I'm sure other kids will be impressed with what this kid comes up with. Here's a page on using it with blind kids: https://www.perkins.org/resource/makey-makey-stem-activities...

6. It's OK if it's not "programming" IMHO. Building things with computers is fun and good learning. Giving the kid a new medium to build things is important, with or without complicated logic. I think there is a benefit to what I'll call more inclusively "coding" which is representing your goals and thoughts in some special format, like HTML or music notation or whatever.

7. Speech input and output in the browser is pretty easy and accessible. But I don't know of anything that brings all that together in a programming-like experience. Using GPT I bet there's something possible and not super complicated that could be created today that couldn't have happened a year ago.

FoxDot is probably what you're looking for.

https://foxdot.org/

As for software, I think the 2 most popular live coding environments are FoxDot (which is Python based and works well with Troop), and Sonic Pi (which I don't think has "multiplayer"). Its been a while since I looked into this style of beat making, so maybe things have changed. But these are good places to start.

PureData is a hell of a rabbit hole! You might also want to check out SuperCollider which is more modern. If you want to skip to the fun stuff there's FoxDot and SonicPi. Both are live coding environments built on SuperCollider.

If you want more info on how to code music in python check our website [crashserver.fr] or [FoxDot] - main project in python

you can make cool music with FoxDot and Supercollider

FoxDot

Not sure how they compare feature-wise, but take a look at FoxDot:

https://github.com/Qirky/FoxDot