What is musical composition vs. live coding?
Working with Tidal Cycles and integrating its JavaScript offspring, Strudel, with Csound, has been very interesting and invigorating. You can see some of what I have been doing here.
Just recently, I noticed that Victor Lazzarini has created an online live coding environment for Csound taking off from the p5.js editor, although he has not (yet?) published the code.
As an algorithmic composer, I have long considered that the code of an algorithmic composition is the score of the composition. And it would follow that live coding, which involves writing code during the performance, would be something like improvisation.
But live coding is still code! So, in a sense, it is also composition.
So, what's the difference between a composition that results in a fixed medium, and a composition that is partly improvised?
The root meaning of "compose" is "put together." Musical composition is the art of putting together elements of music to create a new work.
The difference between algorithmic composition and live coding, as I see it, is that "composition" results in a new work that has a relatively fixed form such that one can hear it all over again and will, because one wants to hear the piece all over again.
Lines are blurred because of course, live coding sessions, or any other improvisations, can be recorded. And then there is a fixed medium that can be heard all over again.
But I think the distinction has been clarified. Composition intends to create a fixed work that is worth hearing again.
The fact that this is possible at all, and highly valued in many cultures, is telling us something important, something about a ritual of attention.
