pastagang

How to learn live coding

At this week’s london live coding meetup, someone asked how to learn live coding. People gave lots of different suggestions. Here they all are. I’ve tried to remember them all, but if I missed any, let me (Lu) know on the london discord server or anywhere else.

Or if you have anything to add or edit, please go for it :)

Resources

• To learn how to make music with strudel, the strudel docs are really good for beginners. You can always get to it by pressing the “Learn” button on strudel.
• To learn how to make visuals with hydra, check out the hydra docs.
• Alex McLean made a great video introduction to live coding (thanks yaxu)
• Alex also made some video tutorials for learning tidal (for making music) (thanks yaxu)

Community

• Keep an eye out for workshops and meetups to attend.
• Come and experience an algorave!
• For London events, check out the luma calendar or join the discord. Links for those are here.
• Try joining a collaborative environment like nudel. You can learn a lot by coding alongside other people.

Tips

• In live coding, mistakes are embraced and encouraged and normal. They happen all the time during live sets and it’s totally okay. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.
• There are no stupid questions. Questions are great and live coders love answering them. And it helps the community if you ask them.
• You don’t need to learn everything to make good stuff. Learn like 4 or 5 tricks, and then play with them together in different combinations. That’s enough to do a load of interesting stuff! You can learn some more stuff later if you like but you don’t gotta know much to make good music/visuals!

WELCOME TO THE LIVE CODING WORLD