Neglected Currents

Wow it's been over a year and half since my last blog. Shame on me!

Although no-one was clamouring for it, for me these blogs are a very personal form of art therapy.  The need to be creative always seems to oppress itself on my thoughts and so it's nice to have a place where it can just gush out.

What's roused me from my blogging slumber is a piece of music software I've discovered that I've completely fallen in love with, TidalCycles. TidalCycles (or just Tidal for short) is a way to make musical patterns with code. As earlier blogs attest, the mixture of art and technology is something I've always been passionate about and, slight techy detour here, the fact that Tidal uses Haskell means that I also have a vehicle for engaging with functional programming which quite handily benefits my day job.

Now this isn't the first time I've got excited by a shiny new toy, played with it for 5 minutes and then left it on the shelf to gather dust. I want to stick with Tidal though and so inspired by the Abandoned Art project I've decided that the way to force myself to practice is to upload a Tidal jam/session/mess to my Youtube account every 2 weeks. These will be my "Neglected Currents" immediately uploaded and forgotten about but will hopefully chart a history from humble beginnings to some quite interesting music.

Without further ado here's the first one:



As a first attempt, it's ok I guess. I managed to forget a lot of the syntax and had to keep stopping to consult my notes. That being said there's some interesting stuff in there, thanks mainly to the power of Tidal and it's pre-prepared sample library.

What I truly find revolutionary about Tidal is that this is the first piece of music software I've used where the main question is not "How do I make the sounds I want?" but "What do I do next?". My history with making music comes from using software that allows you to meticulously order and place sound in preparation for one finished piece. Tidal (and live-coding in general) focus on improvisation. It takes just a few lines of code to produce quite a complex rhythmic pattern and then the challenge immediately becomes focused around how this pattern should morph and change. I've always been interested in improvisation especially within the context of electronic music. Most electronic music I listen to is far too composed and introducing an improvised element into it I think can be a spark for the creation of more dynamic music that sounds, dare I say, alive. This also the first piece of music software I've used where the only barrier between brain and the music is how fast you can type.

Here's to what I hope will be a fruitful time with Tidal. See you in 2 weeks!