Off topic but related: anyone have examples of novel things to play with in electronic music / generative? I recently got an itch to experiment with some analog synths and some hardware / software hacking to make music. Novel or just... fun!
- r/musicprogramming [1]
- #opensourcemusicians on the Freenode IRC network [2]
- VCV Rack [3]
- Supercollider [4]
- Overtone [5]
- ChucK [6]
- Awesome live-coding [7]
- Muffwiggler Forum [8]
[1] - https://old.reddit.com/r/musicprogramming/
[2] - https://freenode.net/
[3] - https://vcvrack.com/
[4] - https://supercollider.github.io/
[5] - https://github.com/overtone/overtone
[6] - https://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
[7] - https://github.com/pjagielski/awesome-live-coding-music
The entry barrier is rather low, and the tool's author is running a very good and accessible online course right now.
Though I'm told that this started some years ago, possibly in the 2000s—maybe it's just that I finally figured out how it's supposed to work, with the Android daw Caustic. The app Hexen looks particularly impressive, but haven't tried it yet.
Late 90s. It was Dieter Döpfer's creation of the eurorack standard that really kicked off the modular synth revival (though of course with anything, a lot of stuff was in the air and Döpfer was also in the right place at the right time).
Lartely, I've had a whole lot of fun lately just playing with a single groovebox, specifically a Novation Circuit.
Although I have had much more complex rigs (I've built several eurorack modules from kits, and owned several keyboards, groove boxes, and other tools), just having a super simple little box and trying to get as much as I can out of it has been a useful exercise of the last two months.
If the goal is to "make music", I'd probably start with a groove box. If the goal is to have fun making weird noises, I'd probably get either a Moog Mother or a Behringer Neutron... both of those are kind of gentle introductions to modular synths.
Orca is live coding environment / procedural music playground.
This video gives an overview of what it is. https://youtu.be/RaI_TuISSJE
Maybe you also like this talk of Andrew Sorensen on live coding music for inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY1FSsUV-8c
The latter can bankrupt you easily ;)