About Your Tutor

Dr. Linda O Keeffe is a sound artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is head of the School of Art at Edinburgh College of Art. O Keeffe has had works performed and exhibited in Asia, the USA, Canada and Europe. Recent works include a commission for the Exchange Gallery in Nottingham launching in October 2017, World Sound Map. In 2016 she was commissioned to be part of the creative team developing an interactive and immersive theatre production in Manchester at The Horsefall space. Her work is predominantly sound based with a focus on installation and performance as well as soundscape studies.

Learn to Live Code with Sonic Pi

So what is Live Coding?
Live coding is where you write code using a programming language so that you can change a live process. Usually coders write code first then apply the change, for example in web development. In live coding you create an immediate feedback effect by writing code while a computer reads and processes the instructions. This means you can quickly see an affect happening in real time. A lot of live coders use it as a creative form of expression, manipulating sound and visuals for an audience in real time.

Events such as Algoraves are places where live coded music, usually dance music, with visuals, are created for an audience. Laptop orchestras are another type of performance where groups of coders share code while performing. This is sometimes called a networked performance.
Sonic Pi is a live coding environment based on Ruby language which was designed to support both computing and music lessons in schools. It was developed by Sam Aaron in the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in collaboration with Raspberry Pi Foundation (wikipedia).

For this tutorial you will need to download the freely available Sonic Pi application which can be used on both Mac and Windows computers.
The tutorials will guide you through the interface, basic coding language, using different effect parameters, and finally, creating your first live coded performance.
You can also download the tutorial folder, this contains support documents for the tutorials, as well as code examples that you can import into Sonic Pi once you have completed your tutorials.

All Rights Reserved by the Author © 2017




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