Author: Reginald Appiah-Sekyere

Mercury. A browser-based live coding environment created by Timo Hoogland. It is designed specifically to make algorithmic music performance human-readable and accessible to beginners. Unlike traditional programming languages that require complex syntax, Mercury uses a simplified, English-like structure (e.g., “new sample beat”), allowing the code to be understood by the audience as written.

Mercury operates as a high-level abstraction over the Web Audio API, running entirely in the browser without requiring external software or heavy audio engines. A key feature of the platform is its integrated audiovisual engine. It seamlessly connects audio generation with visual synthesis, often powered by Hydra, allowing performers to generate sound and 3D graphics simultaneously within a single interface. This design transforms the act of coding into a live, improvisational performance art, blurring the line between technical scripting and musical expression.

Video link: https://youtu.be/T5tb5NLn5DM

Culturally, I felt an immediate connection when the author cited Ghanaian percussionist C. K. Ladzekpo, noting that he would stop playing to chide students for playing without emotion. This validates something I have always felt while listening to music from home: the feel of a rhythm is not just about keeping time but about conveying a universe of expression through simple, repetitive patterns. The text articulates that this African and African-American aesthetic relies on microtiming, sensitivities to timing on the order of a few milliseconds.
However, reading this through a technical lens, I was fascinated by the author’s attempt to quantify soul. The explanation of the pocket as a specific backbeat delay, where the snare is played slightly later than the mathematical midpoint, was a revelation. It transforms an abstract emotional concept, playing laid back, into a programmable variable. The text says that understanding these minor adjustments is crucial to using computers to create rhythmically vital music. We often think of computers as tools for rigid quantization, but the author points to a gray area between bodily presence and electronic impossibility. If musical messages are passed through deviations from strict metricality, then the challenge for me as a programmer is not just to code the beat but to code the deviation. It suggests that, to make electronic music that feels alive, like the Afrobeats I grew up with, I need to treat the error not as a bug but as the most essential feature of the code.

Reading the excerpts on live coding, I found a powerful bridge between the rigorous, serious engineering of my Computer Science major and the immersive worlds of music and the cosmos where I love to get lost. The text describes live coding as a way to unthink the engineering of a day job, transforming the act of programming from a routine task into an “adventure and exploration” that feels akin to traversing the universe. As a senior from Ghana minoring in Interactive Media, I am inspred by how this practice turns the laptop into a “universal instrument”, allowing me to meld my technical background with my creative passions in a conversational flow that is as expressive and boundless as the music I adore.