# Programmatically Creating Live Loops On The Fly

**URL:** https://in-thread.sonic-pi.net/t/programmatically-creating-live-loops-on-the-fly/1919
**Category:** Support, Help & Resources
**Created:** [January 14, 2019, 1:14am UTC](https://in-thread.sonic-pi.net/t/programmatically-creating-live-loops-on-the-fly/1919 "2019-01-14T01:14:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 10

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![perpetual\_monday](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/in-thread.sonic-pi.net/perpetual_monday/32/955_2.png) [@perpetual\_monday](https://in-thread.sonic-pi.net/u/perpetual_monday)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2019, 5:27pm UTC](https://in-thread.sonic-pi.net/t/programmatically-creating-live-loops-on-the-fly/1919/10 "2019-11-29T17:27:05Z")

</div>

Using @robin.newman [recent example](http://in-thread.sonic-pi.net/t/best-way-to-toggle-between-2-different-live-loops/2991/2) as inspiration, I’ve been interested having a set of utilities or “higher order components” (that’s a fancy programmer term) to create live loops with a more generalized or “templated” approach.

One goal of this approach is to separate out the music bits from the machinery. I like the readability of having all the musical ideas together without the `live_loop` boilerplate code around each one. I don’t love the convention of using `method(:someMethod)` to pass the block of code but that was the first incantation that worked for my goal. I was trying to find a way to also automatically call the block of code based on the `name` only but couldn’t crack it yet (treat the string as a method name and call it)  
Standard _Sonic Pi is a subset of Ruby and may change_ warnings apply 🙂

```ruby
use_synth :tri

define :lone do
  play scale(:c5,:minor_pentatonic).choose,release: 0.1
  sleep 0.1
end

define :ltwo do
  play scale(:g5,:minor_pentatonic).choose,release: 0.1
  sleep 0.1
end

define :lthree do
  play scale(:c6,:minor_pentatonic).tick,release: 0.1
  sleep 0.1
end

RUNSTATE_KEY = "ll_runstate_"
LIVE_LOOP_NAME_KEY = "ll_"

define :runLoop do |name, fn|
  loopsym = (RUNSTATE_KEY + name).to_sym
  set loopsym, true
  live_loop (LIVE_LOOP_NAME_KEY + name).to_sym do
    fn.call()
    stop if ! get(loopsym)
  end
end

define :stopLoop do |name|
  set (RUNSTATE_KEY + name).to_sym, false
end

live_loop :control do
  puts "start live_loop :lone"
  runLoop "lone", method(:lone)
  sleep 4
  
  puts "stop live_loop :lone"
  puts "start live_loop :ltwo"
  stopLoop "lone"
  runLoop "ltwo", method(:ltwo)
  sleep 4
  
  puts "stop live_loop :ltwo"
  puts "start live_loop :lthree"
  stopLoop "ltwo"
  runLoop "lthree", method(:lthree)
  sleep 4
  
  puts "ADD live_loop :lone"
  runLoop "lone", method(:lone)
  sleep 2
  
  puts "ADD live_loop :ltwo"
  runLoop "ltwo", method(:ltwo)
  sleep 4
  
  puts "stop live_loop :one"
  puts "stop live_loop :ltwo"
  puts "stop live_loop :lthree"
  stopLoop "lone"
  stopLoop "ltwo"
  stopLoop "lthree"
  sleep 2
end

```

---

_[View the full topic](https://in-thread.sonic-pi.net/t/programmatically-creating-live-loops-on-the-fly/1919)._