Strudel REPL – a music live coding environment living in the browser

There are some pretty amazing live coding sessions of Strudel on YouTube. Some examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkgV_-nJOuE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkgV_-nJOuE

Strudel is a JavaScript port of TidalCycles (Haskell). While TC uses SuperCollider for the synthesis, Strudel uses superdough which seems to be a custom implementation. I'm currently learning SuperCollider sclang and waiting for a version upgrade to have a reason to submit it here - usually some of the discussion is quite insightful. Anyway sclang is the PHP of music - just uglier and less consistent. But it's also powerful and and quite fun.

Oh and there is flok[1] which combines the strudel repl with visuals from hydra. Also there are sclang and other algorave environments available. Everything is synced (with crdts i guess) so it’s live collaborative. Which is nice to remotely jam with friends

[1] https://flok.cc

This is cool because a lot of the current tools are a bit old and I feel a bit like they suffer from NIH (not invented here) syndrome, where what is actually needed is for things to just be in javascript.

This wasn’t possible as much when the last gen of tools came out (sonic pi etc) but I think the time is right.

The next iteration that would be cool is a true two-way interface between the visualizations and the code. Right now the slider is a really awesome element, for example. I think Bret Victor would be proud.

This being text based makes it really easy to have AI generate the music. Now waiting for Strudel agent that will transcribe music into strudel notation.

I'm not very musically inclined but this is what I was able to make:

$: arrange( [4, "<sh09_bd>(4,8)"], [4, "<sh09_bd>(4,8)"], [1, "<sh09_bd mfb512_sd>(6,6)"] ).s().fast(2).layer(x=>x.add("0,2")).gain(".4!2 .5").phaser(2).phasercenter("<4000 800 4000 4000>")

$: s("gm_tinkle_bell").distort("<1 2 1 2:.5>").crush("<8 8 8 6 6 8 8>").chop(4)

$: arrange( [2, "<c4 e4 g4>(3,8)"], [1, "<f4 a4 c5>(3,8)"], [1, "<c4 e4 g4>(3,8)"] ).note().chop(4).fast(4).distort("<3:.5>").phaser(4).phasercenter("<800>").fm(4).fmdecay("<.05 .05 .1 .2>").fmsustain(.4)._scope()

I don't know what half this stuff does but it was still so much fun and this is probably one of my favorite projects ever. What made it most fun for me is that the reference docs are in the page so it's really easy to pick something at random and just see what it does.

I like this intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRJ0xrjLj6A

If you're new to this, you can check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuSZQnkOB_Y

It will explain the process DJDave uses to create music under strudel

is it still possible to run the latest version in appimage on linux? only found this version, it's from 2023: https://club.tidalcycles.org/t/strudel-0-8-0-released/4769

i remember seing a .appimage hosted on github in the releases, but they moved to a new host now

oh and if you don't know what inspired the name of the software ; a strudel is really yummy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strudel

Awesome!

Tide Cycles doesn't work on Fedora, so I might use this instead. Anyway to get it running as a node js script so I use it locally?

For a much more open ended (but advanced) option, one can run Csound live in the browser too now over WASM.

For some music ed stuff I work on, I actually have s7 Scheme in WASM controlling csound in WASM, both were surprisingly easy to get going!

I always wanted to try tidal cycles but the setup always seemed daunting (at least when I last looked). This is pretty cool

Strudel did something many other approaches to live coding have failed to do imho. No hosting needed. Just open the web based REPL and go. Great entry to live coding, but you quickly run into limitations.

Here is a piece inspired by Dawn of Midi and my attempt at taking a piano synth and trying to make it sound like a lof of different things.

Copy, paste, modify.

const bpm = 138; setcps(bpm/60/4);

// Pattern 1: lower melodic pulse

const bass_pulse = note("<d2 f2 a2 g2>") .s("piano") .slow(4) .gain(rand.range(0.45, 0.65)) .attack(0.005) .decay(0.8) .sustain(1.2) .release(1.2) .lpf(800) .room(0.3) .delay(0.15) .delaytime(0.375) .delayfeedback(0.25) .pan(0.5);

// Pattern 1.5 (?): layered base

const bass_pulse_2 = note("<d2 f2 a2 g2>") .s("piano") .slow(4) .gain(rand.range(0.45, 0.65)) .add(note(12)) .attack(0.005) .decay(0.8) .sustain(1.2) .release(1.2) .lpf(800) .room(0.3) .delay(0.15) .delaytime(0.375) .delayfeedback(0.25) .pan(0.5);

// Pattern 2: Mid-range polyrhythm

const mid_pattern = note("<a3 c4 d4 f4 a3>") .s("piano") .struct("x(5,8)") .gain(rand.range(0.25, 0.45)) .attack(0.008) .decay(0.4) .sustain(0.05) .release(0.6) .lpf(perlin.range(1200, 2200).slow(8)) .room(0.5) .pan(rand.range(0.3, 0.7));

// Pattern 3: repetitive pulse

const high_pulse = note("d5 [~ d5] d5 ~") .s("piano") .fast(2) .gain(rand.range(0.18, 0.35)) .attack(0.01) .decay(0.3) .sustain(0) .release(0.4) .lpf(2800) .room(0.6) .delay(0.25) .delaytime(0.1875) .delayfeedback(0.3) .pan(0.7);

// Pattern 4: Sparse accent notes (3 over 4 polyrhythm)

const accents = note("a4 ~ f4") .s("piano") .slow(2) .gain(rand.range(0.35, 0.55)) .attack(0.5) .decay(0.6) .sustain(0.9) .release(0.9) .lpf(1800) .room(0.45) .pan(0.2) .sometimes(x => x.delay(0.3).delayfeedback(0.4));

// Pattern 5: Extended mid-range polyrhythm (13 over 16 - cello thingie)

const mid_long = note("<a3 c4 d4 f4 a3 c4 e4 d4 f4 g3 a3 c4 d4>") .s("piano") .struct("x(13,16)") .gain(rand.range(0.32, 0.48)) .attack(0.06) .decay(0.9) .sustain(0.25) .release(1.1) .lpf(perlin.range(800, 1400).slow(12)) .lpq(4) .room(0.55) .delay(0.18) .delaytime(0.25) .delayfeedback(0.3) .pan(rand.range(0.35, 0.65));

const high_long = note("<d5 a4 f5 d5 c5 a4 g4>") .s("piano") .struct("x(7,8)") .gain(rand.range(0.28, 0.42)) .attack(0.05) .decay(0.8) .sustain(0.3) .release(1.0) .lpf(sine.range(1000, 1600).slow(8)) .lpq(3.5) .room(0.6) .delay(0.22) .delaytime(0.1875) .delayfeedback(0.35) .pan(0.7);

stack( bass_pulse, bass_pulse_2, mid_long, high_long, mid_pattern, high_pulse, accents );

There are plenty of instruments in there. I did a quick and dirty encoding of the first bar of “City of Star” with the piano when I first discovered it.

note("G2@2 A#2 D@2 G@2 ~ G F@2 D@1.5") .sound("piano")

It's cool and all, and I like it. I have TidalCycles installed and have played around with it.

My only criticism is it makes music feel like CSS. In some ways it helps with theory, yes, but the DX is more like Tailwind.

Can it make music like e.g. Extempore (see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_eJ0XdLbWzzq_03wTIMV...)?

All examples I've heard from Strudel so far are pretty boring (constant beat/chord machine music).

Are there examples in other styles?