Journal of Music, Technology & Education - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2016

SuperCollider (SC) is a highly customizable programming language for music; live coding is the dynamic rewriting of a computer program as a concert or exploratory act. Learning sessions on SC can make ready use of live coding techniques, with many interesting musical possibilities, and this article explores the author’s twelve years of SC teaching. Contexts include SC workshops for adults, undergraduate computer music classes, and widening participation of creative coding sampler sessions for 11–13-year olds. The article is a personal reflection on pedagogy, which can provide ideas for live coding and computer music teaching across a range of audiences.

Informed by the author’s experience directing the live coding Cybernetic Orchestra at McMaster University, this article discusses three areas in which collective live coding can make strong contributions to music education: the reconnection of studio labour to public musical performance, the exploration of new forms of musical co-presence, and the comprehension of music as positioned within a wider digital media context.

The practice of coding music live challenges computing conventions with regard to developmental agility. The computational representation of music likewise challenges musicians to articulate their practice in new ways. In this article we describe the development, teaching and use of the JythonMusic environment designed to meet these challenges head on. JythonMusic, written in Python, is an open source project for music making and creative programming activities intended for musicians and programmers, of all levels and backgrounds. JythonMusic supports algorithmic music composition, dynamic coding and musical performativity including live coding. This article examines the functionality of JythonMusic for composition and performance projects in the context of university courses that combine computer science and music. The advantages of this medium for music and programming instruction are demonstrated through several projects and a live coding case study, leading to a series of observations and proposals concerning the advantages of coding in music pedagogy.

Pervasive definitions of live coding in music focus on the simultaneous modification and execution of code in a live performance setting where a performer shares his screen with the audience. This article considers a role for live coding that does not focus on live performance but rather on educational contexts. After briefly discussing an iterative model for both musical composition and coding and the potential roles of live coding within this model, the article introduces EarSketch, a learning environment for computer science and music technology that enables students to write Python or JavaScript code to algorithmically generate loop-based music within a digital audio workstation (DAW) workflow. It discusses the impact of code execution time on the learning environment, explains the environment’s current support for live coding and discusses the next steps and challenges involved in implementing additional support for live coding in the curriculum and the software environment.

Sonic Pi is a new open source software tool and platform originally developed for the Raspberry Pi computer, designed to enable school children to learn programming by creating music. In this article we share insights from a scoping study on the development of Sonic Pi and its use in educational partnerships. Our findings draw attention to the importance of collaborative relationships between teacher and computer scientist and the value of creative pedagogies for learning computer programming as a live-coded participatory enterprise.

Gibber is a creative coding environment for the browser designed for live coding performance and education. It emphasizes a simple notation, a strong audio-visual feature set, immediate feedback, and social collaboration. We describe the use of Gibber and its supporting libraries in a variety of educational settings, from work with a summer camp for middle-school girls to university electroacoustic ensembles. We also describe early results designing a new environment, called Braid, for live coding browser-based digital musical instruments (DMIs) that is informed by our teaching experiences.