TidalCycles

Really looking forward to hearing what you'll code. I'm infinitely grateful to @Yaxu whenever I launch SC3/TC, what a marvelous tool to make music.

Alex, I use Tidal in the studio, and am working on my first proper, release-worthy coded tune... and am a bit puzzled : the composition / production part is mostly done (I'm thrilled btw, I feel like I've finally succeeded in putting in notes and sounds ideas I've been dreaming of for almost two decades, thanks to TC), I've prepared several blocks of codes for various parts of the track. And now I'm hesitating on how to turn it into a "finished" recording : semi-live coded, recorded performance ? long jam that I edit afterward ? Or any way to structure it directly in the code (using seqP IIRC ?

How would you do ?

I'm terrible at getting around to recording tracks so am probably the worst person to ask !

'ur' is good for macro song structure though I think, rather than sequencing patterns on/off (as with seqP/seqPLook), you make a pattern of patterns, which seems more tidal-ish.

I find making some patterns and then jamming with them more productive though. You can't share the who track as code then, though.

Thank you Alex !

Is it currently possible to create aliases for a whole « do » block of code (the way one can use « let » to create custom functions / shortcuts) ? Then these blocks of code could be sequenced I suppose ?

I guess I could instead stack various patterns, define the resulting stacks as custom functions and then use seqP / ur / (slow)cat. Could easily get tedious and hard to manage though..

I basically use TC to MIDI sequence Live, so I’ll simply jam and record TC’s output and then edit the resulting files. Not half as fun though

Thanks again !!!  

Came across this nice list of livecoding environments: https://github.com/toplap/awesome-livecoding/blob/master/README.md

Gibber2 is promising (https://forum.toplap.org/t/gibber-2-0-roadmap/203/6), even more with the addition of Tidal-like syntax.

For obvious reasons, Siren is also tempting https://github.com/cannc4/Siren , might give it a try someday.

I'm quite curious about Renick Bell'sConductive too, but I believe it's yet to be public ?

I'm damn happy with TidalCycles anyway, even though I need to find my own ways to be "fluent" with it.

  On 10/26/2019 at 9:36 PM, th555 said:

Came across this nice list of livecoding environments: https://github.com/toplap/awesome-livecoding/blob/master/README.md

So much stuff here, thanks!

guess this could appeals to some of you :

https://github.com/carrierdown/mutateful?fbclid=IwAR2BAKe0p-anz0i6-LZ4j1LpJJshptM7wFIOny4NZAzMVZu2Sv4gunN7Ch8

I've seen that via CDM, looks great. Now I dream of directly writing my lines of TC code onto Live's clips, would be beyond awesome.

  On 11/1/2019 at 11:50 AM, d-a-m-o said:

guess this could appeals to some of you :

https://github.com/carrierdown/mutateful?fbclid=IwAR2BAKe0p-anz0i6-LZ4j1LpJJshptM7wFIOny4NZAzMVZu2Sv4gunN7Ch8

When's it going to support all the Excel formulas?

  On 11/1/2019 at 11:50 AM, d-a-m-o said:

guess this could appeals to some of you :

https://github.com/carrierdown/mutateful?fbclid=IwAR2BAKe0p-anz0i6-LZ4j1LpJJshptM7wFIOny4NZAzMVZu2Sv4gunN7Ch8

Thats really sexy but its still a lot of mouse clicking.

there's a reaktor based live coding thing i saw yesterday... 

https://github.com/freeeco/livecore

  Quote

I Dropped My Phone The Screen Cracked

I Dropped My Phone The Screen Cracked is a web audio library that uses method chaining and CSS-style selectors to simplify creating, configuring and connecting audio nodes in the browser. 

https://cracked.js.org

this ORCA thing..ouch

Aye Devine Lu Linvega is a mad man - proper focused on everything aesthetically esoteric. Check out his universe of creations here - https://wiki.xxiivv.com/

I'm trying to record something every day this month:

TidalCycles / Live 10.1 / Razor / Bazille / Hive2

  On 3/24/2020 at 8:06 PM, Nil said:

TidalCycles / Live 10.1 / Razor / Bazille / Hive2

Expand  

Beautiful!

can't wait to throw money at my screen, bring the ep/lp/whatever Nil !

Thank you so much everyone !!! Aiming to complete at least a two tracker (a four tracker if I’m productive enough) during lockdown, EP would include that one. I’d love to have a nice label involved in the process, otherwise will release it myself.

Thanks again !!!

Can any of you TidalCycles wizards say something about what TidalCycles brings to the table that you can’t get from plain vanilla SuperCollider?
 

I’m considering delving into live coding but I’d prefer to use Scheme (for which there’s a SC library available) rather than dealing with Haskell.

Once Haskell is installed, there's no reason AFAIK for us musicians to dive in it. Tidal Cycles is deep enough to keep you busy for a while

To answer your question, IMO it's all about its wonderful, brilliant, endlessly fun and inspiring mini-notation syntax (https://tidalcycles.org/index.php/Mini_notation_syntax) and overall workflow : I believe there's no other live-coding system that is that terse and intuitive. I believe SC is much more verbose. So is Gibber. Orca might be of interest, but somehow it looks way too cryptic for me.

Pretty sure that we all use it very differently : it has become my favorite sequencer, I don't use it for audio at all. All Tidal does is sending MIDI to Live, and that's it. But you can create insanely intricate patterns effortlessly, almost instantly.

Besides, defining your own custom functions is super handy too : you need to do anything too complex here, I use them as sorts of pattern banks and shortcuts for all sorts of things.

@Yaxuand all the coding wizards skillful enough / willing to improve Tidal are ever improving its library, updating it frequently and documenting the new features and possible changes. They do answer questions (I'm so grateful for that).

Last but not least, Tidal has an amazingly friendly and helpful user community, and sharing knowledge is part of its DNA. I'd recommend having a look at Toplap's MB and chatroom.

I'll happily help if I can, just ask away if you have any question. I may sound like I'm on a mission to convince you : I'm not. I'm genuinely infinitely thankful such tool exists as it has enhanced my creativity and joy in the studio like nothing else before. 

Ps: https://tidalcycles.org/index.php/MacOS_automated_installation if you're a mac user, makes the whole installation process so simple and easy.

  On 4/23/2020 at 3:23 PM, Nil said:

I may sound like I'm on a mission to convince you : I'm not.

Oh, I think you are

But this is really interesting. Thanks for the writeup.

So if I’m reading you correctly you’re using TC as a programmable sequencer rather than as a programming language for sequencing. This makes sense.

However, my preference would be to use a programming language I find pleasurable to use (Racket or Scheme) for sequencing. This might be too much to ask. 

Will give it some more thought but you have been very, very helpful. Thanks!
 

  On 4/23/2020 at 3:23 PM, Nil said:

Once Haskell is installed, there's no reason AFAIK for us musicians to dive in it. Tidal Cycles is deep enough to keep you busy for a while

 

I could not do this. I work as a programmer on my day job and it may be a professional handicap but I just could not take the Tidal syntax as a musical tool - my head just keeps thinking about "uh what's actually going on underneath the covers". It's probably also the fact that Haskell is a functional language which means it is fundamentally way different to anything I am actually used to.

One day I will make an attempt again I swear...

  On 4/29/2020 at 11:25 AM, thawkins said:

I could not do this. I work as a programmer on my day job and it may be a professional handicap but I just could not take the Tidal syntax as a musical tool - my head just keeps thinking about "uh what's actually going on underneath the covers". It's probably also the fact that Haskell is a functional language which means it is fundamentally way different to anything I am actually used to.

One day I will make an attempt again I swear...

I’m with you here.

The functional part isn’t so bad to me (I’ve enjoyed Elixir and have quite the Lisp fetish) but if I’m going to be writing code, I want to go all the way because otherwise what’s the point.

Which is why I’m now trying to build a similar system in a Scheme derivative called Racket. This makes much more sense to me as you’d be sequencing using lists instead of strings with yet another syntax to learn as in TC.

So far I’ve got the basics up and running but getting timing right turns out to be a challenge (d’uh).

Genuinely curious about your experimentations @rhmilo.

Something I didn't mention : Tidal was the obvious choice for me, to add it to my set-up rather than starting from scratch for the Nth time. I mean, ideally I wish I could live-code Ableton Live directly from clips. Anyway, Tidal helped me overcome a never-ending creative block, and having fun again making music, hence my enthusiasm.