Here is my first attempt at live coding using Hydra!!
What really stood out to me in this reading is the idea that feeling in music does not come from complexity, but from very small timing choices. Even in simple, repetitive patterns, musicians can express a lot just by playing slightly early or slightly late. Those tiny differences change how the music feels, even if the tempo stays the same.
The example of West African drumming and the backbeat helped make this clear. A drummer playing a snare just a little behind the beat can make the groove feel relaxed and grounded. It is not something you would notice on paper, but you feel it immediately when listening or moving to the music. That sense of “in the pocket” seems closely tied to the body and to playing with other people, not just keeping perfect time.
I also liked the idea that musical communication does not have to “say” anything specific. Meaning comes from interaction, from call and response, and from how musicians respond to each other in real time. Microtiming becomes a quiet way musicians communicate and stay connected, which helps explain why groove feels so human.
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.
As a computer scientist, I’m most comfortable coding privately and presenting the finished product afterward. We’re trained to show our best selves—clean code, intentional outcomes, and working solutions. Live coding will challenge this trained instinct by making the process public, exposing not only what works but also mistakes, hesitation, and uncertainty.
Watching code evolve in real time turns programming into a way of thinking out loud rather than a finalized performance. The messiness becomes part of the work, making software feel alive and human.
I also wonder how much traditional music theory actually feeds into live coding. While theory may shape the structures in the background, live coding seems driven more by responsiveness and experimentation. It feels less about following musical rules and more about negotiating them in the moment. For me, music theory in live coding functions as something flexible—useful when needed, but never fixed—allowing spontaneity and interaction to take the lead.
Reading this article made me rethink what live coding truly is, since I’ve been seeing a lot of live coding performances but never really thought about that. I really like the idea that there is no definition to it, “Live coding is about people interacting with the world, and each other, in real time.” Although I found this explanation sort of general but it really showcases how much inclusivity and possibility live coding could potentially encompass. I also like the point the author made that live coding “asks questions about liveness”, prompting reflections on the fundamentals of computer culture and technology. For me it is just so breath-taking that we could use simply 1 line of code creating a particle system in hydra while it would take a century in p5, and the fact that live coding’s straightforward nature is making music and visual creating much easier than ever before. As for “showing the screen” during performances, at least from my own experience watching the showscases, the process of seeing the performer changing the code on the bigger screen as the visuals is a part of witnessing the magic happen and is exactly what truly make the whole thing “live”.
Real time generation of code becomes part of an aesthetic sense, where it comes part of an improvisational performance like coming up with a plot, a movement or a piece of music on the spot in more theatrical improv senses. Our code replaces the bodies used in performance, and to me it feels like a constant reminder of the creator’s existence.
I find it so interesting how the author says that “coding and everyday life are drawn together in ways that become imperceptible”. When I’m using technology devices, I find myself judging whether a software is user friendly by evaluating it with how much technical graphic exposure the graphic designer utilizes, and I tend to consider user-interfaces that contains code as a form of revealing the “backstage of a performance” like an error that is not supposed to appear.
The revealing of the code thus brings a sense of disfamiliarity that tears down the whole illusion of a stage setting and reveals that it’s a show and that’s how we get it to work. Live coding becomes such a fun and pure act that doesn’t serve a commercial purpose like the big tech. It’s like showing the camera man and the whole tech crew behind a film.
Yet, one more thing that struck me is the “improvise” aspect of live coding, and the spontaneity of it. “A live coding musician is like an improvising composer, able to transform the whole structure of the piece with a few keystrokes.” And YESS, I find this so cool that the computer programs that I’ve learned to be “dull and systematic” can be transformed into an instrument with no predictive behavior where our emotions and impulses can have full control of it. We’re allowed to be present through our computer and live and feel something real with it.
Exciting!
One key thing that stood out to me from this reading was where it said that live coding could be best characterized as “thinking in public”. I believe this is something that is lacking from majority of types of musical performances. You see an orchestra on stage, the thinking they’re doing is practically just following along with the music that they have practiced for months. Seeing a DJ on stage, they are playing pre-existing songs, and even when they are doing something live, you have no idea what they are doing. Live coding on the other hand shows everyone in the audience what you are doing, changing the code with the visuals and sounds reflecting it. Your thought process is being shown to the audience through your code, and that’s what makes it unique and different. Through live coding, you are embracing the fact that your computer is being utilized, instead of it being an invisible tool.