Nick Collins

Live coding in laptop performance

Seeking new forms of expression in computer music, a small number of laptop composers are braving the challenges of coding music on the fly. Not content to submit meekly to the rigid interfaces of performance software like Ableton Live or Reason, they work with programming languages, building their own custom software, tweaking or writing the programs themselves as they perform. Often this activity takes place within some established language for computer music like SuperCollider, but there is no reason to stop errant minds pursuing their innovations in general scripting languages like Perl. This paper presents an introduction to the field of live coding, of real-time scripting during laptop music performance, and the improvisatory power and risks involved. We look at two test cases, the command-line music of slub utilising, amongst a grab-bag of technologies, Perl and REALbasic, and Julian Rohrhubers Just In Time library for SuperCollider. We try to give a flavour of an exciting but hazardous world at the forefront of live laptop performance.

How does it play better?: exploring user testing and biometric storyboards in games user research

Improving game design is a hard task. Few methods are available in games user research (GUR) to test formally how game designs work for players. In particular, the usefulness of user tests (UTs) for game designers has not been fully studied in the CHI community. We propose a novel GUR method called Biometric Storyboards (BioSt) and present a study demonstrating how a Classic UT and a BioSt UT both help designers create a better gameplay experience. In addition, we show that BioSt can help designers deliver significantly better visuals, more fun, and higher gameplay quality than designing without UTs and that classic UTs do not provide this significant advantage. Our interviews support the idea that BioSt provides more nuanced game design improvement. The design implication is that a game designed with the BioSt method will result in high gameplay quality.

Generative Music and Laptop Performance

Live computer music is the perfect medium for generative music systems, for non-linear compositional constructions and for interactive manipulation of sound processing. Unfortunately, much of the complexity of these real-time systems is lost on a potential audience, excepting those few connoisseurs who sneak round the back to check the laptop screen. An artist using powerful software like SuperCollider or PD cannot be readily distinguished from someone checking their e-mail whilst DJ-ing with iTunes. Without a culture of understanding of both the laptop performer and current generation graphical and text-programming languages for audio, audiences tend to respond most to often gimmicky controllers, or to the tools they have had more exposure to – the (yawn) superstar DJs and their decks. This article attempts to convey the exciting things that are being explored with algorithmic composition and interactive synthesis techniques in live performance. The reasons for building generative music systems and the forms of control attainable over algorithmic processes are investigated. Direct manual control is set against the use of autonomous software agents. In line with this, four techniques for software control during live performance are introduced, namely presets, previewing, autopilot, and the powerful method of live coding. Finally, audio-visual collaboration is discussed.

The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music

Musicians are always quick to adopt and explore new technologies. The fast-paced changes wrought by electrification, from the microphone via the analogue synthesiser to the laptop computer, have led to a wide diversity of new musical styles and techniques. Electronic music has grown to a broad field of investigation, taking in historical movements such as musique concrete and elektronische musik, and contemporary trends such as electronic dance music and electronica. A fascinating array of composers and inventors have contributed to a diverse set of technologies, practices and music. This book brings together some novel threads through this scene, from the viewpoint of researchers at the forefront of the sonic explorations empowered by electronic technology. The chapters provide accessible and insightful overviews of core topic areas and uncover some hitherto less publicised corners of worldwide movements. Recent areas of intense activity such as audiovisuals, live electronic music, interactivity and network music are actively promoted.

Live Coding of Consequence

ABSTRACT A live coding movement has arisen from everyday use of interpreted programming environments, where the results of new code can be immediately established. Running algorithms can be modified as they progress. In the context of arts computing, live coding has become an intriguing movement in the field of real-time performance. It directly confronts the role of computer programmers in new media work by placing their actions, and the consequences of their actions, centrally within a works setting. This article covers historical precedents, theoretical perspectives and recent practice. Although the contemporary exploration of live coding is associated with the rise of laptop music and visuals, there are many further links to uncover throughout rule-based art. A central issue is the role of a human being within computable structures; it is possible to find examples of live coding that do not require the use of a (digital) computer at all.

Musical Form and Algorithmic Composition

The formalization of music has not always covered so readily the form of music, particularly from a psychological angle that takes the listener into account. Some novel forms have been organizational by-products of the top-down application of grammars or probability distributions. Many works have utilized bottom-up generation of material ready for human arrangement, or accepted existing stylistic templates from music theories. Whilst material might be generated to fill particular sections, the relations between sections and between hierarchical layers, and particularly the control of musical tension through transition, have received far less attention. Algorithmic music often seems stuck in a static moment form, able to abruptly jump between composed sections but unable to demonstrate much real dramatic direction. In part, this is because such ebb and flow engages with seemingly unformalizable attributes of the human musical experience, with musical expectancy, memory and emotion. Nevertheless, since automated music has not been shy about formalizing other aspects of musical structure, and human beings are intimately involved in authoring musical systems, it would seem a highly productive avenue to explore further the possibilities of algorithmic musical form from a psychological angle.

Biometric storyboards: visualising game user research data

Player experience is difficult to evaluate and report, especially using quantitative methodologies in addition to observations and interviews. One step towards tying quantitative physiological measures of player arousal to player experience reports are Biometric Storyboards (BioSt). They can visualise meaningful relationships between a players physiological changes and game events. This paper evaluates the usefulness of BioSt to the game industry. We presented the Biometric Storyboards technique to six game developers and interviewed them about the advantages and disadvantages of this technique.

Automatic composition of electroacoustic art music utilizing machine listening

This article presents Autocousmatic, an algorithmic system that creates electroacoustic art music using machine-listening processes within the design cycle. After surveying previous projects in automated mixing and algorithmic composition, the design and implementation of the current system is outlined. An iterative, automatic effects processing system is coupled to machine-listening components, including the assessment of the “worthiness” of intermediate files to continue to a final mixing stage. Generation of the formal structure of output pieces utilizes models derived from a small corpus of exemplar electroacoustic music, and a dynamic time-warping similarity-measure technique drawn from music information retrieval is employed to decide between candidate final mixes. Evaluation of Autocousmatic has involved three main components: the entry of its output works into composition competitions, the public release of the software with an associated questionnaire and sound examples on SoundCloud, and direct feedback from three highly experienced electroacoustic composers. The article concludes with a discussion of the current status of the system, with regards to ideas from the computational creativity literature, among other sources, and suggestions for future work that may advance the compositional ability of the system beyond its current level and towards human-like expertise.

BBCut2: Incorporating Beat Tracking and On-the-fly Event Analysis

Abstract BBCut2 is the latest manifestation of a software library for realtime algorithmic audio splicing. Machine listening capabilities are supported for realtime beat tracking and audio event analysis, such that splicing manipulations respect component events, and their micro-timing with respect to an inferred metrical structure. The architecture, whilst currently most effective for transient rich percussive signals, is modular enough to be extensible to new observation models. A scheduling system is described that can cope with splicing driven from an external clock, empowering realtime beat tracking led segmentation and other processing effects.

Experiments with a new customisable interactive evolution framework

This article collates results from a number of applications of interactive evolution as a sound designers tool for exploring the parameter spaces of synthesis algorithms. Experiments consider reverberation algorithms, wavetable synthesis, synthesis of percussive sounds and an analytical solution of the stiff string. These projects share the property of being difficult to probe by trial and error sampling of the parameter space. Interactive evolution formed the guidance principle for what quickly proved a more effective search through the multitude of parameter settings.The research was supported by building an interactive genetic algorithm library in the audio programming language SuperCollider. This library provided reusable code for the user interfaces and the underlying genetic algorithm itself, whilst preserving enough generality to support the framework of each individual investigation.Whilst there is nothing new in the use of genetic algorithms in sound synthesis tasks, the experiments conducted here investigate new applications such as reverb design and an analytical stiff string model not previously encountered in the literature. Further, the focus of this work is now shifting more into algorithmic composition research, where the generative algorithms are less clear-cut than those of these experiments. Lessons learned from the deployment of interactive evolution in sound design problems are very useful as a reference for the extension of the problem set.