Live Coding Academy

A structured, browsable curriculum for making live electronic music and visuals — production, modular, DJing, VJing and live coding — distilled from open, freely-licensed teaching material into a graph of knowledge atoms you can actually walk.

Pick a path

Each curriculum is a zero-to-performing route through the shared module pool. Paths overlap deliberately.

Audio-Visual Performer — integrated, synced live AV

A performer who already has a single-medium footing — ideally having done the live-coder (music) or live-visualist (visuals) path — and now wants to drive sound and image together as one tightly-synced instrument. This path assumes the music and visual fundamentals and concentrates on the integration layer: feature extraction, audio-reactive mapping, tempo/transport sync, generative and AI layers, and the stagecraft of holding a whole AV set together live.

5 segments 40 modules
Dawless Performer — hardware jam to recorded live take

Producer or hobbyist who wants to perform music on hardware (modular/Eurorack, grooveboxes, no computer) rather than in a DAW

5 segments 45 modules
DJ / Selector — from track selection to a mixed set

Aspiring DJ who loves music and wants to select and mix records/tracks and play out for real crowds. No production experience assumed; the goal is selection-and-mixing craft, not making tracks.

5 segments 42 modules
Electronic Music Producer — from raw sound to a released track

Aspiring studio producer; some listening taste, no formal training assumed; DAW or dawless-agnostic but studio-oriented. Wants to make finished, released electronic tracks.

5 segments 63 modules
Generative & AI AV Artist — real-time machine-driven performance

Coder/artist with some live-coding or creative-coding footing who wants to build real-time generative and AI-driven audio-visual systems and perform with them

5 segments 28 modules
Live Coder — zero to performing live-coded music

No prior music or code experience; browser-first (Strudel), graduating to SuperCollider/Tidal-class tools. The learner wants to make music by typing code and, eventually, to perform it live on stage.

5 segments 65 modules
Live Visualist — zero to performing live-coded & generative visuals

No prior graphics or code experience; browser-first (Hydra), graduating to GLSL shaders and creative-coding frameworks

4 segments 56 modules
Music Culture Writer — scenes, lineages & critical practice

Music journalist / scene historian / curator / critic who wants to understand and write about electronic-music lineages, scenes, and their politics rather than perform or produce. The deliverable medium is PUBLISHED WRITING and a defensible critical position, not a performance.

5 segments 46 modules
Sampling Artist — from crate-digging to a curated sample practice

Crate-digger / beatmaker / sound-collagist whose instrument is recorded sound itself — field recording, break-mining, chopping and re-contextualising samples — rather than synthesis, hardware, or DJ selection. Wants to build a personal sample voice and release a curated, cleared sample-based work.

5 segments 48 modules
Shader Artist — real-time GPU craft to a demoscene-grade visual

Real-time GPU / shader artist (Shadertoy / demoscene lineage) whose medium is the fragment shader itself — raymarched SDF scenes, procedural noise/fractal fields, lighting and physically-based rendering — rather than Hydra video-synth, venue clip-VJing, or AI-diffusion visuals.

5 segments 41 modules
Synthesist / Sound Designer — deep DSP to a performed live synth rig

Synthesist / sound-designer whose instrument is the synthesis engine itself — deep DSP (additive, wavetable, advanced FM, granular, spectral, physical-modeling, formant/voice synthesis), patch design, and a performed live synth rig — rather than DAW track production, modular hardware, or live-coded patterns. They want to design voices from first-principles DSP and perform them, backed by a sound-design portfolio.

5 segments 43 modules
VJ — visual performance with projection, light & video

Visual performer who wants to play out: mixing clips/generative sources, mapping projection, driving LEDs/DMX, and syncing to a DJ or band across a whole night at a venue.

5 segments 46 modules

Or browse the graph

By level — the L0→L5 spine

L0 · Orientation

What is this world, what are the paths — install nothing yet.

L1 · Foundations

The transferable primitives: rhythm, sound, the shared vocabulary.

L2 · First instrument

Pick one lane and make a first loop, patch, or shader.

L3 · Craft

Arrangement, sound-design depth, modulation, audio-reactive craft.

L4 · Performance

Playing live: dawless, controllerism, DJing, VJ mixing, recovery.

L5 · Voice

A personal style; releasing, scenes, community, sustaining a practice.

By domain — the 16 streams

A · Music theory & musicianship (734)B · Sound design & synthesis (1111)C · Sampling, field recording & sample culture (266)D · Mixing, mastering & loudness (486)E · Modular, Eurorack, grooveboxes & dawless (481)F · Live coding: music (1133)G · Shaders & GPU programming (312)H · Creative coding & live-coded visuals (485)I · VJing, projection mapping, LED/DMX & video (232)J · Audio-visual integration & sync (265)K · AI & real-time generative AV (214)L · Visual foundations (200)M · Performance, DJing, live-set & stagecraft (315)N · Tools & free/open software stack (343)O · Culture, history & theory (1044)P · Community, scenes & practice (206)