This reading gave me a new way to think about what it means for music to be “live.” I never thought much about how different musicians use laptops in performance. The comparison between Deadmau5 and Derek Bailey is really interesting. Deadmau5’s shows are big, flashy, and mostly pre-recorded, while Bailey’s performances are improvised and unpredictable. Live coding seems to sit in the middle. It uses computers, but in a way that’s more like playing an instrument in real time.

I liked how the authors talked about the audience being able to see the code on the screen. It is a cool way of showing that something real is happening, even if it’s not physical like playing guitar. It also made me think about how we value “work” in music, sometimes we want to see someone sweating on stage to believe they are doing something real. Overall, I found this piece a bit long and academic, but the core idea of rethinking what counts as live performance is really stuck with me.