Perry Cook, one of our founders, is one of the forerunners of live-coding: live music where the performers are programming sound as they go. He’s also a co-founder of PLOrk (the Princeton Laptop Orchestra). Here’s a snippet of his Medium article on the birth and future of live-coding:
It’s probably important to define “coding,” otherwise we might end up talking about live DJs, “Controllerists,” or others who take the stage with one or more laptops as their primary musical instrument. In fact, DJs “program” live, but programming in that context means selecting and sequencing the cuts and tracks that will be played. Yes, I know DJing is more than that, but you’ll soon see that it’s not live-coding.
Controllerists are also brave souls who perform live with a laptop, but they are using various non-keyboard/mouse interfaces, such as drum pads, fader boxes, game controllers, or custom-built thingamabobs, connected to a computer to make and perform on a new instrument of their own design and making.
So how is live-coding different? While our two laptop-ists were using the standard computer keyboard in concert, and maybe the mouse, they were NOT using packaged software for looping or synthesis or playback of sound/music files, and they weren’t using external controllers to influence the sound. Live-coders actually perform for an audience by typing and running computer programs, in real time.
Live-coding music from an early adopter: Check out the full story on Medium.
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