I first discovered Tidal Cycles after seeing a viral post featuring a girl using Strudel. The interactive and creative possibilities really caught my attention, so I decided to explore Tidal Cycles as well.
One thing I really like about Strudel is the visual feedback it gives: small squares or boxes that highlight which sounds are currently being played. I was wondering if it’s possible to get a similar kind of visual feedback in Tidal Cycles? If so, could someone point me in the right direction or share any tips?
Thanks in advance for your help!
(This was translated to English with help from AI).
The highlighting was originally implemented in tidal's experimental 'feedforward' editor. This is a stripped-down editor designed for 'from scratch' live coding performances, so might not meet your needs. For example, it doesn't implement copy-and-paste. It doesn't really have save or load features either, although there is the possibility of recording and playing back keystrokes.
It's also available in the text.management editor. Again this is experimental software, but is a more traditional editor with standard features like saving, copy-and-paste, tabs etc.
I mean it’s obvious that some parts of this could be optimized, but I think that the most time consuming part for me will be, to make it as robust as possible to code changes till the next eval.
My plan is to start the conversation regarding the implementation in the next few weeks with a fully workin implementation.
Strudel has gone viral recently, and I think the main reason is the popularity of the video with the girl. In my opinion, the visual feedback with the squares really helps the audience understand what’s happening and connect the music they hear with the code they see. Otherwise, even in that same video, it wouldn’t be obvious that the music is being created with code, and it probably wouldn’t catch people’s attention in the same way.
Yes the highlighting makes teaching and learning much easier, and when you get used to it as a perfomer, code feels a bit 'dead' without it. Thanks for pushing this forward @mrreason and co!
Probably there is some history to this but I think Char Stiles accidentally invented the viral short form live code explainer format, with DJ Dave and Switch Angel turning it up further!
Unfortunately the development is still in an early stage and there is nothing you could try out yet. As I mentioned before, I will start the discussion within the next weeks. Then I would be glad, if someone tries it out and plays around with it.
But in general I am already able to see the events highlights in my Pulsar editor. And I do have a clear plan how to implement everything and how to make it as robust as possible.
