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3 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2017–2024
10:23 · 157K views · Jul 24, 2014
Andrew Sorensen's OSCON 2014 keynote in which he live-codes generative music on stage using his Impromptu environment while narrating his computational and musical choices. It imagines concert programmers as a performing art.
HN commenters regard it as an inspiring, all-time favorite demonstration of live coding music.
5 comments from Hacker News
Andrew Sorensen is awesome. This video of one of his presentations on Impromptu is one of my all-time favorite programming talks: this video
That is really cool, I had a ton of fun playing with Overtone a few years ago (Clojure Supercollider wrapper). There's also Impromptu, which I think is Scheme... There's an incredibly cool talk by Andrew Sorensen using it: this video
[LINK] can also be added to the list. Visual programming audio and video. Maybe you also like this talk of Andrew Sorensen on live coding music for inspiration: this video
I studied a BFA in Sound Design. It was an incredible mix. Along with the base arts courses, it stepped across music, film, animation and comp sci. It taught me the basics of signal processing, encouraged 'play' and seemed to balance creative expression with the engineering skills to enable that to happen. After getting through all the courses that interested me I dropped out to travel and then fell into a few interesting jobs that kept me otherwise distracted from going back. I would 100% do it all again. The only thing that I'm super upset about is that I did't fall into the live coding community while I was there (this was literally happening at the same uni this video ). One mindset that it solidified in me was when building things come up with the concept first, then figure out how to make that happen. That may be easy, or it may not. But at least what you're making will be worthwhile. I work in the audiovisual industry today running an R&D lab for a systems integrator. We create presentation spaces, high-end corporate facilities and VC suites (which are still apparently a thing), a little bit of broadcast work, some stadium projects and lots of large format displays. When I'm tied into projects I'm usually end up rolling with some systems engineering, DSP programming, a bit of embedded dev, UI work and network engineering. About to begin something new and rather exciting too.
Related question: Are there any nice videos demoing this kind of music artistry in a different genre? I'm thinking of stuff like this video or maybe something with vocal sampling?