seeing as how quiet it's been here of
late, i think i'll attempt to start a
debate on one of those basic
there-is-no-answer issues. of course, i may just be ignored.
it's probably uncontroversial to
declare that someone typing code into a
field and having, say, SuperCollider execute it is doing live coding.
conversely, someone clicking on mp3s in iTunes .. is not.
but, anyone using one of the music
programming languages is not starting
at zero; at "best", s/he's using
primitives someone else has defined and implemented.
at worst, she's simply executing
pre-packaged routines and musical
systems someone else conceived and
implemented, and possibly there's a GUI
involved, so the "coding" takes the form of point and click.
is that so far from deciding which mp3
to play in which order, for how long, in iTunes?
i myself use SC. i've spent a lot of
time, though never near enough, poking
around the docs and listserv and built
a collection of tools that i can invoke
with very abbreviated code. over time
i've collected a little library of such
tools and accompanying code snippets,
and when i sit down to make noise, i'm
mostly sitting in front of a page full
of these snippets, "just" deciding
which of them to execute when, and the
only code i write in situ, if any, is
in the form of small routines, made
with copy and paste, that endlessly loop over a couple of these code snippets.
e.g.
http://soundcloud.com/all-n4tural-firehose/powers-of-hang
is that live coding?
if i took the time to learn enough
about SC's gui functionality and
programmed some windows and buttons to
execute the snippets -- something i'm
often wishing i'd do, but always
finding myself postponing because it's
more fun to make noise -- i'd be almost
entirely pointing and clicking, to the same effect.
would that still be live coding?
love coding (*),
eddi
http://soundcloud.com/all-n4tural
(*)
http://soundcloud.com/rukano/batman-lovecoding
Received on Sat Aug 10 2013 - 14:07:15 BST