Atoms

'Algorave' was coined in 2011 by Alex McLean and Nick Collins; the first named event was London 2012

'Jacking' was the physical, hip-driven dance style that gave early house its bodily character

'Outrun' names both a synthwave music subgenre and, more broadly, a 1980s retro visual aesthetic

'Progressive' in dance music descends from 1970s progressive rock through 'progressive dance' of the late 1980s

1960s liquid light shows established live music-synchronized visuals before video existed

A breakbeat is a drum-only 'break' from a record sampled and looped as a track's rhythmic backbone

A browser music sandbox lets first-contact learners hear a concept before any install or account

A cent is 1/100 of a semitone; cents are logarithmic so intervals add while ratios multiply

A drone is a sustained tone or chord that holds a tonal ground while changing only slightly

A live coding audience need not understand the code to appreciate the performance, just as guitar audiences need not know how to play

A modular synthesizer consists of single-function modules connected manually, making signal routing impermanent and nonlinear

A peer sparring partner at a similar level sustains creative-coding motivation better than solo practice

A programming language can become a musical instrument performed live in front of an audience

A regional Spanish-language live-coding collective sustains itself by bridging into TOPLAP's global infrastructure

A synthesizer makes sound using electricity rather than physical vibration

Abstract art liberates form and color from the requirement of representing real objects, enabling purely pictorial aims

Acid house and MDMA transformed British nightlife in the late 1980s and created the cultural ground for UK trance

Acid house is a Chicago house subgenre defined by the squelching TB-303 basslines pioneered by Phuture c.1986

Affordable laptops, cheap projectors, and growing rave/club culture drove the 2000s VJ boom

Algorave and live coding are a genuinely global, internationally distributed practice, not a local scene

Algorave guidelines encode the scene's egalitarian ethos into how events are run

Algorave is a global movement, born in 2011, of live-coded electronic dance music with the code projected

Algorave is a meeting point of hacker philosophy, geek culture, and clubbing

Algorave keeps the focus on the music and the dancefloor, not the performer

Algorave musicians are live improvisers writing code, not DJs mixing recorded music

Algorave reframes live coding as a rave: bodies dancing to visibly-generated algorithms in a club

Algorave situates itself as part of a longer history — not the future of dance music

Algorave, coined by Alex McLean from 'algorithm' + 'rave', spread worldwide into a distinct movement

Algorithmic music is defined by the urge to explore musical thinking through formalized abstractions

Algorithmic pattern-making long predates computers, e.g. knitting, Maypole dancing, and bell-ringing

Always run a short test recording or stream before going live to catch setup issues

Ambient music emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm

Ambient music suits film scoring because it creates atmosphere without demanding foreground attention

An algorave is a dance event whose music is composed live as algorithms, with the code shown to the audience

An artist-programmer uses computer language as the medium of the artwork itself, not merely as a tool

At an algorave the code screen, not the performer, is often the audience's focus

AV performance history has three waves: 1900s synaesthesia, 1960s expanded arts, and 1990s digitalization

Blender is a free, open-source 3D suite spanning modeling, animation, rendering, compositing, and scripting

Braindance prioritises the funky, danceable side of Aphex Twin over IDM's austere abstraction

Brian Eno's act of naming 'ambient music' gave a scattered practice a genre identity

Chicago house grew from the Warehouse as a 'safe party' that mixed races, genres, and scenes on one floor

Chicago house is the original house music produced in mid-to-late 1980s Chicago from which all house subgenres descend

Color education works through progressive exercises where each problem prepares the next — accumulated comparison builds the eye

Color literacy requires experiencing effects before naming them — practice precedes theory, which is theory's conclusion

Color memory is far weaker than auditory memory — the same color name evokes many different hues in different people

Color theory must address both objective physical laws and subjective individual perception — neither alone is sufficient

Creative coding aims at expression, not function — code as an artistic medium

Dark ambient emerged in the mid-1980s as industrial artists adopted ambient's spaciousness while wielding noise and shock tactics with more subtlety

Dark ambient is defined by ominous drones, dissonant overtones, low-frequency rumble, and heavily processed found sounds

Darksynth shifts synthwave away from bright Miami Vice sounds toward horror-cinema, industrial and EBM darkness

DAWless jamming means making electronic music with hardware machines synchronised as one system, no computer

Detroit techno fused European synth-pop with African-American funk and electro, producing a new genre in the mid-1980s

Detroit techno is 1980s Detroit dance music fusing electro, Chicago house, industrial and synth-pop

Detroit techno originated with the Belleville Three, who fused Kraftwerk's machine sound with funk

DnB achieved its first UK Number 1 single in 2012, 20 years after its origins, marking a delayed mainstream breakthrough

DnB is named for its two pillars: fast breakbeat drums and deep heavy basslines

Drone music is the sustained-tone branch of minimalism, prizing harmonic stasis over melody, rhythm, or change

Drum and bass is defined by fast syncopated breakbeats at 165–185 BPM with heavy sub-bass

Drum and bass typically runs 160-175 BPM, faster than jungle but derived from it

Drum programming sequences rhythmic patterns using electronic or digital sounds instead of a live kit