Performing live-coded music under pressure

This module is about the algorave moment nothing else prepares you for: a dark room, a projector showing your editor, dancers who feel every 16-bar boundary you miss, and no pre-rendered track waiting if the code dies. Everything you have practised in Tidal at a desk changes character when a submitted line goes straight to the PA — live coding has no DJ headphone cue, so the no-preview constraint is not a limitation to work around but the defining condition of the form.

The arc runs from supported to exposed. Start by drilling the internal phrase clock — counting bars while editing, changing only at boundaries — because staying in time with the audience’s phrase structure is the discipline everything else hangs on. Then rehearse the blank-slate opening using the from-scratch technique of memorised patterns you can type without thinking, freeing attention for listening. Practise sets first with a fallback file open, then close it: the TOPLAP no-backup ethic reframes that removal as raising the stakes the audience can feel. Finally, stage a deliberate crash in rehearsal and recover it musically, so that when the capstone asks you to crash on purpose in front of people, you already know errors read as human and authentic rather than as failure.

The required atoms are exactly what the capstone tests: phrase-time management, kairotic intervention, courage before visible errors, risk-aesthetics, the no-preview reality, from-scratch construction, and the flow and feedback loops you reflect on afterward. The supporting atoms enrich the reflection — bricolage and creative-systems framings of what you were doing, legibility and transparency debates about the projected screen, ensemble and slow-coding variants, and editor affordances like flash feedback and keystroke replay that document the set you just survived.