L0 · Orientation
What is this world, what are the paths — install nothing yet.
216 atoms · grouped by primary domain
A · Music theory & musicianship — 9
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
Drum programming sequences rhythmic patterns using electronic or digital sounds instead of a live kit
Dubstep is characterised by syncopated rhythms, prominent basslines, and a dark tone
Music is created by exploiting relationships between sounds, not by sounds in isolation
Music is made by mixing and matching small musical ideas, then changing those combinations over time
Music notation is a tool for storing and communicating musical ideas, not a prerequisite for musicianship
Pitch is the singable 'how high or low' quality of a sound, distinct from noise you can only call high or low
Swing was first popularized in 1930s US jazz, with no single formula across players
B · Sound design & synthesis — 3
C · Sampling, field recording & sample culture — 3
D · Mixing, mastering & loudness — 1
E · Modular, Eurorack, grooveboxes & dawless — 5
A modular synthesizer consists of single-function modules connected manually, making signal routing impermanent and nonlinear
DAWless jamming means making electronic music with hardware machines synchronised as one system, no computer
Eurorack is the dominant modular format: 3U tall, 3.5 mm jacks, from a Doepfer standard
Eurorack modules are interconnected with 3.5 mm mono miniature jack patch cables
Open-source DIY Eurorack modules can be built for around $20 and an hour each, making modular affordable
F · Live coding: music — 32
A live coding audience need not understand the code to appreciate the performance, just as guitar audiences need not know how to play
A programming language can become a musical instrument performed live in front of an audience
Algorave is a global movement, born in 2011, of live-coded electronic dance music with the code projected
Algorave reframes live coding as a rave: bodies dancing to visibly-generated algorithms in a club
Algorithmic music is defined by the urge to explore musical thinking through formalized abstractions
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
Estuary runs a subset of Tidal (Mini-Tidal) in the browser with no installation
Estuary's entire interface, tutorials and help texts are translated into multiple natural languages
Glicol is designed for zero-knowledge beginners but scales to expert live-coding
In live coding an error is material to work with, not a failure to hide
In live coding, programs are instruments that can change themselves — making the code itself a dynamic, performable medium
Live coding is improvisatory real-time composition where the writing of code itself is performed as a live event for an audience
Live coding treats algorithms as expressions of thought, not as tools — distinguishing it from tool-centric approaches to music technology
Live coding's defining conviction is that code is written and projected in front of the audience in real time
Pure Data is a real-time visual dataflow language where connected boxes replace text code
Removing cost, installation, and first-step difficulty is what makes a creative-coding tool usable by beginners
Renardo is the actively maintained successor to FoxDot for Python live coding over SuperCollider
Sonic Pi uses music to solve the engagement problem in teaching programming, not a technical one
Sonic Pi was built to teach programming to school children through music-making
Strudel is a browser-based JavaScript port of the TidalCycles pattern language
Strudel runs entirely in the browser at strudel.cc, requiring no install to start making sound
Strudel's MiniREPL is an inline interactive editor for running and editing code samples in the docs
The algorave moved live coding from experimental venues into clubs with dancefloors, first held in London in 2012
The Hacking Choreography manifesto applies live-coding transparency values to dance: code is visible on stage, and dancers can subvert the program
The laptop's portability and price point make it a more accessible instrument than a piano, democratising music production
The TOPLAP manifesto demands transparency — 'show us your screens' and 'obscurantism is dangerous'
There is no universal language or method for live coding — the practice is inherently pluriversal and resists easy classification
TidalCycles is split across two repos: the Tidal pattern language (Codeberg) and SuperDirt sound engine (GitHub)
TidalCycles learners use Tidal Club (forum), Discord, and the Codeberg repository as distinct support layers
TOPLAP is the international live coding arts organisation, founded in 2004, with local nodes and shared community channels
TOPLAP's core demand is screen transparency: the audience must see the code being written, not just hear its output
G · Shaders & GPU programming — 1
H · Creative coding & live-coded visuals — 8
Creative coding aims at expression, not function — code as an artistic medium
Generative art is always a collaboration between the artist and the autonomous system
Generative art requires an autonomous system and a degree of unpredictability
Hydra is a browser-based, JavaScript live-coding language for networked video-synth visuals
p5.js carries Processing's accessibility goal to the browser as a visual-first creative-coding environment
The choice of first programming language matters less than the transferable principles it teaches
The official Processing tutorials split into video links and leveled text lessons across four sibling platforms
Writing custom software enables artistic expression that commercial tools structurally prevent
I · VJing, projection mapping, LED/DMX & video — 12
1960s liquid light shows established live music-synchronized visuals before video existed
Affordable laptops, cheap projectors, and growing rave/club culture drove the 2000s VJ boom
AV performance history has three waves: 1900s synaesthesia, 1960s expanded arts, and 1990s digitalization
Five terms — visual music, expanded cinema, live cinema, VJing, and live AV performance — divide the audiovisual-performance field
Live cinema is the simultaneous real-time creation of sound and image by sonic and visual artists on equal terms
Live cinema's lineage runs from shadow theatre through magic lanterns, colour music, expanded cinema, and video art
Projection mapping tools trade ease-of-use against programmability across three tiers
Projection mapping turns physical objects into display surfaces for video
The 1971 Sandin Image Processor pioneered an open, roll-your-own philosophy prefiguring open-source tool culture
TouchDesigner is a node-based visual platform for real-time interactive multimedia
VJing is real-time selection and manipulation of visuals, the visual counterpart of DJing
VJing originated in 1970s New York club culture, predating MTV's adoption of the term
K · AI & real-time generative AV — 1
L · Visual foundations — 6
Abstract art liberates form and color from the requirement of representing real objects, enabling purely pictorial aims
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
In creative coding courses the objective is art, but the medium is student-written software
M · Performance, DJing, live-set & stagecraft — 2
N · Tools & free/open software stack — 5
Always run a short test recording or stream before going live to catch setup issues
Blender is a free, open-source 3D suite spanning modeling, animation, rendering, compositing, and scripting
OBS captures desktop audio and microphone by default; a wrong device selection yields a silent stream
OBS composits a scene from stackable sources such as display, window, and webcam capture
OBS's Auto-Configuration Wizard picks encoding settings from your intent, hardware, and network
O · Culture, history & theory — 114
'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
A drone is a sustained tone or chord that holds a tonal ground while changing only slightly
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
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 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 pattern-making long predates computers, e.g. knitting, Maypole dancing, and bell-ringing
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
At an algorave the code screen, not the performer, is often the audience's focus
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
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
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
Dubstep emerged from Croydon's social insularity where limited entertainment options concentrated creative youth into the same rooms
Dubstep was born from producers who loved UK garage's antecedents but were disillusioned by its homogenization
Eno discovered ambient aesthetics accidentally when a quiet, single-channel record merged with room noise
Erik Satie's 'furniture music' designed music to blend into the environment rather than command attention
Fabio coined liquid funk in 1999 via a Creative Source compilation
Footwork is a ~160 BPM Chicago dance genre of cut-up samples over syncopated drum patterns, evolved from ghetto house
Footwork is utilitarian music made to soundtrack competitive dance battles, not for passive listening
Footwork split off from Chicago Juke / Ghetto house in the mid-1990s as a local splinter scene
Form 696 let London police suppress Black music events through venue licensing rather than prosecution
Forward>> (FWD>>) was the founding London club night that incubated dubstep from 2001
Frankfurt's early 1980s electronic scene coined the word 'techno' before Berlin's scene existed
Frankfurt's early-90s scene, seeded by DJ Dag's trance-leaning sets, became the birthplace of the trance sound
Goa trance began as DJs remixing Western electronic tracks into dancefloor mixes in 1980s Goa
Goa trance emerged from beach party DJ culture seeking to induce trance states through continuous music
Goa trance emerged in the early 1990s from Goa, India's underground hippie party scene, not from a record industry
Grime built an independent video and online platform ecosystem because mainstream media ignored the genre
Grime is a 140 BPM East London genre built on syncopated breakbeats, MC vocals, and jagged electronic sound
Grime is defined by 140 BPM and an aggressive street-realist aesthetic rather than by instrumentation or melody
Grime's early spread relied on pirate radio, dubplate culture, and a self-contained DIY ecosystem outside mainstream industry
GTA: Vice City (2002) helped turn attitudes toward the 1980s from parody to homage, seeding synthwave
Hardstyle bifurcated into euphoric and raw camps when part of the audience wanted a harder, darker sound
Hardstyle is an umbrella term for harder dance styles unified by a tough, dark reverse bass
House grew from Chicago's Black and gay underground clubs, where dance music survived after disco's fall
House music takes its name from Chicago's Warehouse club, where Frankie Knuckles was resident DJ
House music was born when disco went underground after the 1979 Disco Demolition Night
House music's defining property is its structural ability to continuously spawn new genres from its core elements
In algorave, musicians take responsibility for the music — not the software
Isolationist ambient is a 1990s dark-ambient subgenre defined as music that deliberately 'pushes away' rather than comforts listeners
Jersey club emerged from Newark DJs self-pressing and selling club-track CDs in 2001
Jesse Saunders' 'On and On' (1984) is regarded as the first house record on vinyl
Jungle and drum & bass split by feel and drum treatment, not by tempo
Jungle was rooted in Black and working-class London communities who were actively excluded from mainstream clubs
Live coding frames computer programming itself as a creative cultural activity
Live coding is a community of practice, organised since c.2000 around TOPLAP
Live coding is improvised real-time music-making, not DJing and not software engineering
Live coding performance projects the running code so the audience witnesses how the music is made
Live coding strips away GUIs to reveal the language underneath, treating the laptop as a language machine
Melodic techno pairs hypnotic techno drive with harmonic melody and cinematic atmosphere
Microhouse is best described as 'housey minimal techno' rather than 'house with techno elements'
New beat began when DJ Dikke Ronny played the EBM record Flesh at 33 rpm instead of 45
New beat is a late-1980s Belgian EDM genre fusing new wave, hi-NRG, EBM, and hip-hop
New beat was the immediate precursor to Belgian hardcore techno and gabber
Nu-disco is a house-rooted genre built on live-feel disco grooves and fresh composition rather than sampling old records
Pre-internet record shops functioned as community hubs where producers, DJs, and fans exchanged music and built the scene
Progressive house emerged in the early-1990s UK rave scene as a marketing break from American house
Progressive house grew as a natural progression of late-1980s North American and European house
Progressive house split into a 1990s atmospheric-club identity and a 2010s festival-mainstage identity
Proto-dubstep emerged from South London producers' experiments on the B-sides of UK garage releases around 1999–2002
Psychedelic trance developed directly out of Goa trance as its successor genre
Real-time computer control of sound synthesis dates to Max Mathews' GROOVE system (1968)
Revival events transmit a scene's foundational sounds to new generations through original artists
Rotterdam Records, founded by Paul Elstak in 1992, was the first Dutch hardcore/gabber label
Synthwave is an electronic microgenre built on 1970s-80s film-soundtrack sounds and 1980s nostalgia
Techno is instrumental 4/4 electronic dance music at 120-150 BPM, built on production technology for continuous DJ sets
The 'trip hop' label was coined by Mixmag in 1994 but was rejected by the Bristol artists it described
The 1979 anti-disco backlash targeted Black and gay music and pushed dance music underground
The 1991 Love Parade unified Germany's scattered techno-house scenes into a national movement
The 2011 film Drive was the placement that catapulted synthwave into mainstream recognition
The algorave definition parodies UK rave law, swapping 'repetitive beats' for 'repetitive conditionals'
The demoscene emerged from software cracktro culture in the 1980s as a realtime audiovisual art form
The earliest recordings of computer-generated music date to 1950s machines, with Turing's lab among the origins
The fall of the Berlin Wall opened vacant East Berlin spaces that catalysed the Berlin techno scene
The four-on-the-floor kick pattern — house music's signature — became the dominant rhythmic template in all contemporary dance music
The TB-303 failed commercially because its pattern sequencer was hard to program compared to bass guitar
The term 'nu skool breaks' was coined by Rennie Pilgrem and Adam Freeland at their Friction club night in 1996
The term 'nu-disco' first appeared in print in a 1996 XLR8R interview with Chicago house artist Cajmere
The Warp Artificial Intelligence albums (1993-5) reframed rave-derived electronics as 'listening music' while keeping rave roots
The word 'dubstep' was coined informally in an office conversation about the dub influence on 2-step
Trance emerged from the German (Frankfurt) techno/EBM underground in the late 1980s, adding melody and psychedelic atmosphere to techno
Trance music is defined by hypnotic rhythms, soaring melodies, and a 126–140 BPM tempo range
Trip-hop is a psychedelic fusion of hip-hop and electronica with slow tempos and an atmospheric sound
Two women were structurally essential to dubstep: Sarah Lockhart organized the scene and Mary Anne Hobbs broadcast it globally
UK garage began by pitching US garage records up on the decks and adding British grit
UK garage broke into UK mainstream charts from 1999 with 2-step tracks reaching number one
UK garage established itself in the marginal 'Sunday Scene' slot because jungle/DnB dominated prime weekend nights
UK garage fused imported US garage house with jungle, ragga/dancehall, and R&B into a hybrid style
UK garage has undergone multiple revival cycles showing the genre's structural durability beyond its 1999–2002 commercial peak
UK garage's heyday was defined by an aspirational dress culture that later became a class-based fault line as the scene fragmented
UK garage's Sunday-morning pub and club culture filled the gap left by post-rave licensing hours
UK illegal raves in 1988-89 used phone-chain systems to direct attendees to locations announced only on the day
UK Sound System culture from Jamaican Windrush families is the direct ancestor of both UK garage and Grime's DIY production ethos
Unlicensed pirate FM radio was the pre-internet distribution and community infrastructure of UK dance genres
Wonky emerged in 2006 as a colourful reaction to the austerity of concurrent UK dubstep and grime
P · Community, scenes & practice — 14
A peer sparring partner at a similar level sustains creative-coding motivation better than solo practice
A regional Spanish-language live-coding collective sustains itself by bridging into TOPLAP's global infrastructure
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
Live Coding: A User's Manual is published CC-BY-SA, enabling free use with attribution and share-alike — a license choice that itself reflects live coding's ethos
Live coding's online-performance culture long predates the 2020 pandemic
Projecting live code on screen provides an alternative perceptual channel for deaf audiences
Sharing work publicly early accelerates skill development through feedback and accountability
The algorave movement is driven by decentralised local community groups, not a central body
The main obstacles to getting good are habits and mindset, not the code itself
The TOPLAP manifesto demands code visibility, algorithmic insight, and rejects obscurantism — and was always intended as a draft
TOPLAP is the informal global organisation connecting live coding communities worldwide
TOPLAP was founded at the 2004 Changing Grammars symposium in Hamburg, giving live coding a name and community
Writing your own tools in free software reframes music-making as refusal of proprietary control