Getting Started Strudel
strudel.cc
strudel.cc
https://open.spotify.com/track/39K9sFCNCv7H5kyQAfcePr?si=8a1...
After diving in and reading through the docs (the workshop intro is a great way to get started) I can say I am really impressed.
What I like about strudel is the concept of cycles and how they work. Combine that with note numbers rather than names and it’s actually a pretty interesting way to compose melodies and jam out song ideas.
There is support for randomization like Euclidean patterns so you can really play around and tinker with it until you stumble on something you like.
Switch Angel has a really nice video showing their workflow here: https://youtu.be/sefJz9biLCY?si=QRb6g8qZ48qlfLtT
Being able to edit while the example continues to loop is so engaging. Not sure if thats the standard for these things but what a fun way to learn.
I find the fluent API plus "display-oriented REPL" a very cool way to do things. The docs need a lot of work, though… The only API reference is in a sidebar of the REPL (i.e. not in the docs site), and discoverability depends entirely on guessing the name of the function. There's multiple ways to do things and all of them are explained with reference to each other, so it's very difficult to track down an authoritative, explicit overview of how something works.
That being said I think something needs to be highlighted. For some reason, it sees itself as "low barrier to entry" relative to traditional ways of making music (ie partiture or an actual music instrument). How is possessing a phone, ability to read English and knowing how to program lower barrier to entry than picking an instrument like a piano and playing some music?
Clearly, Strudel assumes some knowledge of basic music theory (melody, rhythm and harmony) so having that, what is it exactly that makes Strudel lower barrier to entry.
Is Strudel assuming that learning to program is inherently easier than learning to play any instrument?
It would be nice if whatever assumptions it has could be made explicit as it's not the first time that I see [insert here software tool to make music] claim that it's a lower barrier to entry to make music without saying why.
Obviously, this being HN people will likely prefer software and algorithmic approaches to making music in your room as opposed to the traditional and more social way of learning with a teacher and a cohort of students.
Compare that to piano: sure, you can walk up to a piano and plunk out a melody easy enough - but once you start venturing towards harmony and song the skill required ramps up exponentially. Suddenly you need to have both hands doing independent things, know where to place your fingers so that you can comfortably play the notes for the current beat and future beats (there's a ton of technique here and it's not the most intuitive thing ever - entire books are written to drill it), the list goes on.
It's nothing like trying to teach kids an imperative programming language, it's not really in the same category as general purpose programming. It's designed for music making and you can make complex rhythms very quickly out of very simple parts.
For anyone having done a migration from Github to another platform (Codeberg, gitlab.org, selfhosted etc.): was it worth it? What went well, what went wrong?
Now, I publish projects on Github only if they are worth sharing/being discovered, but most of my code is done on private (and sometimes public) Codeberg repositories.
Also, I liked the idea of Codeberg and not being dependent of big corps. It was a technological regression (even if Github as a lot of issues) but it felt good. Big projects with a few hundreds stars stayed on Github, for community.
Attrition has held me back to participate in discussions or reporting issues. For that you need an account, and some source code web services make 2FA mandatory, and often I need to reauthenticate and go through that flow. If I'm exhausted, my brain makes the decision that it's not worth the effort.
A couple of other other reasons come to mind as well: setting up your account properly (adding SSH public key), setting up yet another entry in one's own password manager, acknowledging that their will be additional mails going to my mailbox (transactional e-mails, maybe important informational e-mails such as data leaks, TOS changes, etc.).
It really is a no-brainer for any free/open source project to be hosted on a free/open source platform. It's pretty nuts that so many stay on Microsoft github who are busy IP-stripping everything via AI, even without considering all the other terrible stuff MS get up to that it's best not to support or be associated with.
Quite a few live coding platforms are making the move to codeberg too. It's a bit trickier for desktop apps like supercollider who depend on cross-platform ci builds though.
My best guess is that it won't work well, but we'll never know until someone tries it.
apfel.
enjoy.