Learning music with Strudel

Loved playing with it! https://strudel.cc/?qVv8Cr0OD6cc

I've run across more and more strudel musicians (developers?) doing a kind of live coding performance art and posting clips on tiktok and reels. It's really entertaining to watch. I've been meaning to dabble in it.

I've been seeing a few links to Strudel recently so I went digging to see how old the project is - looks like it launched in April 2022 https://loophole-letters.vercel.app/strudel

It came out of the same team as Tidal Cycles, a Haskell live-coding music tool which was first released around 2009. https://tidalcycles.org/docs/around_tidal/tidal_history/

I've been following this project with great interest.

Quite possibly one of the most interesting things is just how competent the REPL is. It does some things that no other programming environment does in a prompt, all centered around real-time processing:

- All code in the prompt is being constantly evaluated - What parts of expressions are currently in use are highlighted - Visualization widgets sit side-by-side with the code

That last one is playfully rendered as pseudo-TUI "graphics", but is also presented with no borders or chrome around it. That's in sharp contrast to notebooks like Jypyter or Mathematica. They use minimal screen real-estate which also minimizes scrolling. If you look at videos of using this live, the ability to navigate the REPL quickly is crucial for performances.

So it's a lot like a kind of step-wise debugger, only more minimalist and moving at the (slow) speed of the music.

Ever since seeing Strudel, I've wondered what various programming sandboxes would be like if they could visually demonstrate operations in slow-motion.

I posted this link, some days ago:

Coding Trance Music from Scratch (Again) [video]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu5rnQkfO6M

It´s a well done programming and music performance

There's also a neovim plugin for those who want to play around with this locally https://github.com/gruvw/strudel.nvim ; it essentially launches strudel in a browser but synchronizes the strudel and nvim editors.

EDIT: fixed link to not have trailing semicolon.

Let me introduce you to a good time.

Step 1: https://strudel.cc/workshop/getting-started/ . Click play on coastline" @by eddyflux

Step 2: Listen for a while

Step 3: setcps(.75) -> setcps(1.5)

Step 4: Listen :)

That is the extent of my strudel knowledge, but damn this is cool.

True that compared to FoxDot, Sardine or Tidal, the syntax and visualization are just making the whole thing a real pleasure to use.

But this is way too taxing for my linux boxes that are ending stuttering quite badly sometimes. Are you all using macs or something?

Live-coding music environments like Strudel are powerful because they externalize the creative process. When your composition is visible code, you can iterate faster, debug musical ideas, and even collaborate in ways traditional DAWs don't support. Code-as-instrument is genuinely innovative.

Working on this: https://github.com/madprops/slide

I have submitted a talk for FOSDEM26 on Live Coding Music and Hardware with Strudel and MicroPython. Hope to get in :)

I was excited to see this, but then realized only chapter 1 is done out of what ultimately will/should be a 25 chapter tome.

Strudel docs leave something to be desired as well.

What I've found to be the most useful so far is to ask an LLM to make a line of whatever: a beat, a synth, etc., tweak it, then layer it.

It gives a really good sense of how to architect a song file, which is missing from the little snippets in the strudel docs

Allow me to use this post to give big kudos to the maintainers of Strudel for having put together a brilliant set of official docs. I found them incredibly well put together and hence really useful to learn. I have played around with Strudel many evenings and I am always amazed about how intuitive Strudel is to create beats and sounds, to the point that I prefer to create music in Strudel over the established DAW software. I would love for there to be a good bridge between producing sounds and beats with Strudel code and structurering and mastering an entire track. This is missing in Strudel since it’s clearly build for a live coding environment. Any tips from users about ways or tools to make this bridge are always welcome!

Love Strudel, trying to learn it but inevitably you also need some musical foundation. It's a fascinating blend of specialties. Also I found AI is complete garbage at generating Strudel. Here is my weak attempt at Beethoven:

<pre> const SCALE = 'C#:minor' const CPM = 56 const SOUND = 'piano'

$: arrange( [4, n("<-7, 0>.25")], [4, n("<-8, -1>.25")],

  [2, n("<-9, -2>*.5")],
  [2, n("<-11, -4>*.5")],
  
  [4, n("<-10, -3>*.5")],
  
  [4, n("<0, -3, -7>*.25")],
  [4, n("<-1#, -3, -8#>*.25")],
  
  [2, n("<-2, -9>*.5")],
  [2, n("<-6, -13>*.5")],
  
  [4, n("<-3, -10>*.5")],
  
  [4, n("<0, -7>*.25")],

$: arrange( [8, n("4 7 9")],

  [2, n("5 7 9")], 
  [2, n("5 8b 10")],
  
  [1, n("4*.1 6# 10")], 
  [1, n("4 7 9")],
  [1, n("4 7 8")], 
  [1, n("3 6# 8")],
  
  [1, n("0 2 5")],
  [2, n("2 7 9")],
  [1, n("2 7 9, 11 - - 11")],
  
  [1, n("2 8 10, 11 -")],
  [2, n("2 8 10")],
  [1, n("2 8 10, 11 - - 11")],

  [1, n("2 7 9, 11 -")],
  [1, n("2 7 9")],
  [1, n("1 7 10, 12 - -")],
  [1, n("1 7 10")],

  [1, n("2 4 9, 11 - -")],
  [1, n("2 4 9")],
  [1, n("3 4 8, 10 - -")],
  [1, n("3 4 8, 13 - -")],

  [1, n("2 4 9, 9 -")],
  [3, n("2 4 9")],

</pre>

Besides Strudel, there's also http://glicol.org/. It seems Glicol is more geared towards sound synthesis, while Strudel's sequencer is more powerful.

A really great source for this is DJ Dave

if you need a 4/4 clicker metronome I crafted this one :) https://strudel.cc/hNV6sevsZERY

I've been trying to compose music with Strudel after some years attempting to play the guitar and the piano.

This resource is very helpful

Strudel is dope and a ton of fun, but every single piece of its interface seems determined to confuse people who already know music theory and composition.

That's not really a point against it, it's a great tool and it's a ton of fun, but I wish there was a way to use it that at least kind of sort of mapped back to traditional music notation, especially rhythm notation.

Does anyone know if it's possible to run Strudel code on VS Code (or NeoVim)? Tidle Cycles has add-ons where I can play/stop updated code or part of code with ctrl(cmd)-. and ctrl(cmd)-space. I mean, one of Strudel strong point is the browser based rich visualization, but I just want to edit JS code with my favorite editor.

Here's a Strudel fork that uses LLMs to turn instructions like "add a bass layer" into code: https://github.com/stuhlmueller/strudel-llm

Strudel is my favorite music coding environment. I mostly play on acoustic instruments but coding music has been really helpful as I try to learn music theory. Being able to just play in the browser without setup helps me focus on the music and less on fiddling with the tool. And it supports vim key bindings!

This clip from an 80s spy comedy is probably too obscure to become a meme, but it deserves to be: https://clip.cafe/gotcha-1985/what-this-strudel/

I love this approach to learning music.

A nitpick: Isn't the below statement wrong? I thought "RolandTR909" was the name of the soundbank which is used for both bd and sd?

"bd is bass drum (also called kick-drums), sd is snare drum. RolandTR909 is the name of the sound."

Did anyone else think this article was gonna teach you how to play music using strudel (the food) somehow?

made this with opus 4.5 few days ago:

https://strudel.cc/#CnNldGNwbSg3Mi8yKQoKbGV0IGJhc3MgPSBub3Rl...

when AI takes over the world it will communicate with itself with a tonal language communicated in Strudel

Strudel is a great tool and is helping me to make EDM from scratch. There are good tutorials and music that is easy to get started or to make something really interesting.

Is there a way to run it completely locally?