Hey folks, SUNJIR0 here…
I’ve been experimenting a lot more these days with generative music. While I typically release my music as albums, I’m really excited by the possibility of releasing some “tracks” in a different format entirely: as a program (or collection of programs) that when opened, loads up Sonic Pi and any respective synths in the background and plays through the generative piece as long as the program is open. How might someone go about doing this cleanly (i.e. without having to manually load up Sonic Pi, input the code, configure the MIDI to work with the other Synth, etc)?
Some thoughts about what this final package might look like:
- I’d want the sounds to be generated by an external synth that can be included in the package, something free and open-source like Surge XT to expand the possibilities of the sound beyond Sonic Pi’s built-in synths. This means the code would need to identify this VST/program and launch this as a part of the program.
- Ideally the “album” would include multiple releases that allow people to cycle through them without having to open up a new program for each release
- In the future, longer term, it would be interesting to include some sort of variables that are exposed to the listener so that there is a degree of interactability, but this is unimportant to me at the moment
- It would be interesting if Processing/p5.js/hydra could be used to generate visuals along with the audio as an optional addition, but also not really a must-have for this MVP
- I have experience with Processing, p5, Unity, and Sonic Pi in case this helps at all in coming up with a solution!
Thanks for any help! I’d also really appreciate if anyone has examples of similar projects being done.