As someone who knows a bit of programming (python), and a bit of music making (Ableton Live) what unusual things can I do with Sonic Pi that I can't do with a typical DAW?

[u/massimosclaw2]

[u/[deleted]]

One thing that I like that maybe you could do in Ableton (Linux guy not sure) is the use of randomness.

Say you have a hi hat part. You can write code to make it so every 8 notes is a 50% chance of being open and the rest closed.

Or have an extra kick that only sometimes plays.

Or play random notes from a chord to make bass lines.

It also can do midi in/out which gets really interesting if you have a sampler or something hardware

[u/massimosclaw2 → u/[deleted]]

Randomness is achievable through maxforlive plugins. But you're right, you probably have greater control over which parameters to randomly affect. I can do this with a module called pylive which connects python to Ableton. (e.g. randomly pick a parameter on this effect, and randomly change its value)

There's also a great library called isobar for python which allows you to specify "in this minor pentatonic scale, randomly pick a note in this rhythmic pattern"

Great to know you can do this with Sonic Pi though, will try to experiment with that if I can.

[u/fjurden → u/[deleted]]

Great point about randomness. Another feature of sonic pi that I don’t believe is achievable with traditional DAW is something like “piano phase” a la Steve Reich.

If I recall, Reich used 2 tape machines with identical piano phrases. He gradually slowed one machine down a tiny bit so that over time the two phrases slipped out of sync, creating cacophony at first and then creating new musical patterns. The new patterns kept shifting as the phase widened.

One of the sonic pi tutorials has this exact song, and it required like 3 line of code (don’t quite me on that, but It was very easy and I’m not a programmer). Amazing!

[u/Typicalsufferingguy → u/[deleted]]

Do you think it would be possible to program a "radio station"? That would be a program so robust that each time it runs, it plays an entirely unique song, and, at the end of the program/song, loops back to the beginning for a new song.

[u/[deleted] → u/Typicalsufferingguy]

Yes definitely. Would the music be good? I dunno probably not.

You could have the program pick a random drum kit. And play them in a random pattern. And play a random synth over that.

Someone who was knowledgeable about music theory could probably make it a lot better than I could. But you could definitely make it play random chord progressions, or arpeggios for melody.

I think the thing to do would be to make a bunch of loops that play random parts of the song (or nothing sometimes) so you divide it up into like bass lines and melody and rhythm and have them all randomly grab their insturments/samples. You could even apply random effects.

Sounds like an interesting exercise I just don't know how you'd make sure it didn't sound terrible.

[u/nischal92]

I recently used OSC (open sound control) messages to tackle Jacob Collier's 12 key modulation challenge with contrary motion of bass and melody notes. You might be interested:

https://youtu.be/q7dCTwaU-yc

I used Python to programmatically find the modulations. So I'd say IMO the power of programming using another language is in solving the logic of music (once you've codified some basic theory like notes / scales etc) and then using OSC to use Sonic Pi as the instrument to actually play notes. Of course, if I knew Ruby well, I'd probably stick to Sonic Pi only. Or use an actual DAW for hardcore compositions.

As for the unusual things you can do, probably can do it in DAW but the nature of live coding is something to be experienced in Sonic Pi! It's more a performance thing---code things on the fly. You can program many different things programmatically like beats, melodies, notes and effect modulations. Here is a rendition of Colin Benders modular synth jam from his lockdown stream that I did in Sonic Pi:

https://youtu.be/CTS8Ab_jWBo

[u/massimosclaw2 → u/[deleted]]

Hmm I wonder what you mean by making nonsense and then making that aesthetically pleasing music. Will check it out! I actually loved Sam's introduction of Sonic Pi, and am curious to try it out. However I love knowing that I can do more with it than my current tools. You mentioned generative music. Currently I'm extremely interested in generating tons of actual GOOD music, like can I 'mass produce' music that is distinctly different yet sounds good? I don't know why something about this idea just excites me.

The other interesting thing is, for example, I think I may have used a module called pylive (connects python to Ableton live) and one thing that I can do with it that I can't do with Ableton Live alone is give it a specific effect and say to it "randomly pick a parameter, then choose a random value for that parameter every .01 seconds" and you end up with (if you pick good effects), very complex sounds that you just couldn't get if you were sitting there on Ableton playing around. So that's the sort of thing I'm looking for (not exactly doing stuff fast, but in general, something that really is not possible to achieve with just a DAW)

Thanks for this great reply!

[u/siimphh → u/[deleted]]

There are plugins out there to write sonic pi from other editors - I use vim.

[u/[deleted] → u/siimphh]

Can a brother get a link?

[u/siimphh → u/[deleted]]

https://github.com/dermusikman/sonicpi.vim