
'Algorave' Is the Future of Dance Music (if You're a Nerd) - lelf
http://www.vice.com/read/algorave-is-the-future-of-dance-music-if-youre-an-html-coder
======
peteforde
Giles Bowkett gave a standing-ovation receiving talk at RubyFringe in 2008 on
his Ruby-based algorithmic MIDI generation framework, Archaeopteryx.

[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/archaeopteryx-
bowkett](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/archaeopteryx-bowkett)

I cannot recommend this talk enough. First off, he was way ahead of the curve
on this, tech-wise. For this article to not mention him is frustrating.

Secondly, Giles was both hilarious and inspiring. His presentation kept people
in rapture; 10 minutes into lunch, not one person in the room left.

~~~
adw
I've met one of the performers in the article; he was doing this (in
SuperCollider, largely) back in at least 2004 if not earlier.

Not diminishing how awesome Giles is, but it wasn't original in '08\. It may
not have been original in '98.

~~~
yaxu
Yes we've been doing it since 2000 ([http://slub.org](http://slub.org)), I
haven't actually used supercollider in performance though I don't think, I
just used it for a perl.com article once. This is not the future of electronic
music, but now we've given it a stupid name people seem to be more
interested..

~~~
lewispollard
Just want to say you were awesome at algorave - wish I was good enough/fast
enough in emacs to start doing stuff like this!

~~~
yaxu
Thanks, it went pretty well although I wasn't expecting to play solo, was
supposed to be working with a live drummer but he had troubles finding the
venue.

~~~
lewispollard
I wondered what had happened to him - was looking forward to seeing him play,
would have been an incredible result I reckon. Any chance of that actually
happening?

~~~
yaxu
Yes, tonight in Sheffield at prism 15
[http://www.prismsheffield.co.uk](http://www.prismsheffield.co.uk)

------
ryanthejuggler
My favorite line in the whole thing was the final line: _This article was
amended to represent the fact that the artists mentioned weren 't creating
music with HTML._

~~~
CalRobert
About 5 of us left incredulous comments in response to the line "live HTML
coding" \- you can still see this in the URL I believe.

~~~
CalRobert
And I see they deleted all of those, including some interesting discussion of
the merits of Haskell, Processing, etc. Poor form on Vice's part, in my view.

~~~
yaxu
No these comments are still there. It seems vice put their content on
different sites, with different sets of facebook comments, so you're probably
looking at a different url.

~~~
saraid216
Could you please link the URL that gives these comments, or reproduce the
comments here? I was curious about them and could not find them.

~~~
yaxu
[http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/algorave-is-the-future-of-
dan...](http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/algorave-is-the-future-of-dance-music-
if-youre-an-html-coder)

------
lelandbatey
This is very much an annoying off topic observation, but seeing this title
makes me think:

    
    
        'Algorave' Is the Future of Dance Music (if You're a True Scotsman)
    
    

Why can't we just have it be the future of Dance music, why does it have to be
"if you're a Nerd".

~~~
dragonwriter
> Why can't we just have it be the future of Dance music

Because that's a stronger claim -- that it is the future of Dance music for
everyone.

> why does it have to be "if you're a Nerd".

Because with that qualification, its a weaker claim -- for the rest of the
universe, it may not be the future of dance music.

~~~
yodsanklai
Just nitpicking here, but it's not really a weaker claim. Either it's the
future of dance music, or it's not. The future of dance music is the same for
everyone.

Or maybe they mean, what nerds think the future of dance music is.

~~~
tokenizer
I'd go even farther than you are.

By claiming "if you're a nerd", they're creating a class distinction where one
group can and does ascertain truth, while the "others" cannot and will not.

So not only is it the future of dance music, but you'll only know if your
privilege and knowledge can allow you to. A modern day hermetics of sorts.

But you know, thats just, my opinion man...

~~~
tesseractive
One possible interpretation is that the scene is completely awesome as long as
you're capable of coding and thus being one of the real participants, but that
it's less interesting for pure spectators. Thus, for music coders -- "nerds"
\-- it is the future, but for non-nerds, there are more appealing
alternatives.

------
scrumper
"Sounds wholly or partly characterized by the emission of a succession of
repetitive conditionals."

This is a fun play on the words of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, which
criminalized the huge underground rave scene in the UK. (It's 'repetitive
beats' in the text of the Act).

Knowing that wouldn't really have changed the article much, but it's not as
po-faced a definition as the author might have thought.

~~~
anigbrowl
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti_EP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti_EP)

------
toolslive
This looks very familiar:
[http://overtone.github.io/](http://overtone.github.io/)

[http://vimeo.com/groups/82430/videos/21956071](http://vimeo.com/groups/82430/videos/21956071)

~~~
lowmagnet
This one is even better, though it takes a sharp eye to see what's happening
without narration:

[http://vimeo.com/groups/82430/videos/70016164](http://vimeo.com/groups/82430/videos/70016164)

That's two players side by side: Andrew Sorensen, and Ben Swift. It is a
thoroughly entertaining 20 minute set. Plus reading how they are modifying the
code is really neat. I only have a passing familiarity with scheme so I only
get the gist of what's happening.

------
swalsh
I'm a nerd, and i love repetitive techno... so this in theory should have been
for me, but that youtube link was really hard to listen too.

~~~
001sky
The photos seem to not look like much fun, either...

[http://assets.vice.com/content-
images/contentimage/123487/_D...](http://assets.vice.com/content-
images/contentimage/123487/_DSC3011_016.jpg)

~~~
cheeseprocedure
Pictured here: nobody dancing.

~~~
lewispollard
It wasn't really about the dancing, I don't think anyone attended to dance.
The use of the word 'rave' is very tongue in cheek, it was purely a group of
people interested in music being live coded coming together to enjoy a
performance.

------
lewispollard
Awesome - I live in Sheffield and actually attended this event (though I don't
seem to be in any of the photos!)

~~~
phreeza
What was the atmosphere like in your opinion?

~~~
lewispollard
A little awkward I guess, it felt much more like a hacker meeting than a rave.
I've been to a lot of experimental music performances in the city and they all
have a similar feeling - much less partying and good times and much more
introspective in a way, absorbing the music and enjoying it individually. You
got a sense that everyone was sort of on the same wavelength even if we didn't
interact with each other much.

That said it was REALLY enjoyable for me as part of my dissertation at uni was
about generative music and live coding, it was really cool to see it properly
in action with a crowd of people enjoying it.

------
thinkpad20
That's cool; I had heard of overtone, but I didn't realize there was any kind
of equivalent for Haskell. What's the name of the library?

~~~
pfeyz
It looks like they're using tidal.

[http://yaxu.org/tidal/](http://yaxu.org/tidal/)

------
oxalo
I think it'd be cool if this somehow merged with the current club scene to
bring more of a 'live' aspect back to electronic music.

~~~
Tossrock
There's plenty of live aspects in electronic music, see for example Robert
Delong, Beardyman, Booka Shade, Pretty Light's current tour, etc.

~~~
bananacurve
Beardyman isn't strictly electronic, more beatbox but he is amazing. Check him
out live in Edinburgh

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVXUHTN10](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVXUHTN10)

------
jamesbritt
Got no love the first time around
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795624)

Anyways, interesting and fun, not new but so what; new for some people is
still good.

------
JonnieCache
Nick Collins rides again! He was one of my tutors at uni. We made drum
machines and talked about autechre. Interesting guy.

~~~
diydsp
Ah yes, i was wondering if that was the same Nick Collins who wrote the
awesome books on Handmade Electronic Music :)

I wonder how the author of the article missed that, heh.

Anyway, obviously, this live-coding is not "The Future" any more than anything
else is, nor is it 100% new; There have been experiments since the beginning
of computer music trying to make live compositions---

NEVERTHELESS, I think this article is great because it documents and
celebrates how much technology we've leveraged w/r/t to music. We can now
analyze and compose with great effect and detail. I mean, there are over 160
APIs for music on the web alone now:
[http://www.programmableweb.com/apitag/music](http://www.programmableweb.com/apitag/music)

Now that understanding of parsing and programming and algorithms is growing,
we should expect to see our knowledge reflected in the field of music! Yay!

~~~
surgesg
Actually not the same person.

[http://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/nicvsnick666.pdf](http://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/nicvsnick666.pdf)

~~~
yaxu
Yes the two nic[k] collinses had a big fight once.
[http://www.nicolascollins.com/collinscup.htm](http://www.nicolascollins.com/collinscup.htm)

------
agentultra
Alex, referenced in the article, introduced me to live-coding when he wrote
[http://www.perl.com/pub/2004/08/31/livecode.html](http://www.perl.com/pub/2004/08/31/livecode.html)

I'm not a huge fan of the "algorave" moniker but I can attest to the
experience of the author at such events. It's pretty tepid. There's not much
to dance to. The "future" it is not but perhaps an alternate history or sub-
culture it perhaps is (or once was... not sure if coverage in Vice lets you
keep that status).

That being said I love it. :)

------
Aardwolf
URL currently is: www.vice.com/read/algorave-is-the-future-of-dance-music-if-
youre-an-html-coder

Article title currently is: 'Algorave' Is the Future of Dance Music (if You're
a Nerd)

So html coders are nerds?

~~~
lambda
From the bottom of the article: "This article was amended to represent the
fact that the artists mentioned weren't creating music with HTML."

Based on the screenshots, they seem to doing this in Haskell, which is a far
cry from HTML. I guess the article authors have no idea about what programming
actually consists of, so used "HTML" to mean any kind of code.

~~~
yaxu
I think this was more sub ed mangling

------
qzxvwt
Alright, pretentious techno lover here. This is digital music production
without a GUI. Fun idea and all, but it's pure novelty. And to motion that
this specifically is "for nerds" implies that there aren't currently plenty of
artists in the various realms of electronic music already geeking up a storm.
They're just not headlining the shitty surface world of commercialized "EDM".
I guess I just want to remind people to respect this art form and to remember
to give credit where it's due.

~~~
yaxu
Absolutely, credit given here:
[http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/09/play/algorav...](http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/09/play/algorave)

------
icesoldier
I would love to hear this writer's take on chiptune, since he seemed way too
amused that it was a "dance club"-type setting without any of the "dance club"
stereotypes. I don't think most chip shows have the live generation like this,
but there is a component of live-editing there.

------
joebo
Any recommendations on how to inexpensively (free) experiment in making techno
music? I downloaded some synth programs on my iPad (HexASound, Synth) to play
with. Would something like Algorave, Archaeopteryx, or Overtone be better?

~~~
cheeseprocedure
Check out SuperCollider [1] and Csound [2] as well.

[1]
[http://supercollider.sourceforge.net](http://supercollider.sourceforge.net)
[2] [http://www.csounds.com/](http://www.csounds.com/)

------
anigbrowl
Musically yes, code-as-performance no. Indeed, this mainly demonstrates a)
what a bad interface text is and b) how heavily some proponents are leaning on
using samples of other music. I think it's significant that Autechre
(generally acknowledged as the the kings of experimental electronic music)
compose mainly within Max and build their live performances around a mix of
their own sample library and abstractions of their Max tools to the rather
simpler patching of the Nord Modular G2.

------
Globz
This is very neat, I will give it a try for sure!

