What is Sonic Pi?

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Sonic Pi is a free, open-source programming environment designed for creating music through code. It was developed by Sam Aaron at the University of Cambridge and has become a popular tool for live coding performances, teaching, and musical experimentation.

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Getting Started

download Sonic Pi from sonic-pi.net

First Steps: Simple Notes

I started with the most basic command - playing a single note:

play 60

Ths plays middle C (MIDI note 60). When I first ran this, I was surprised how simple it was to make sound!

Building Squences

Next, I learned that to play multiple notes in sequence, you need to add pauses:

play 60# C
sleep 0.5
play 62# D
sleep 0.5
play 64# E
sleep 0.5
play 65# F
sleep 0.5
play 67# G

My First Melody

I experimented with creating a simple melody - this was my first musical phrase:

play 60
sleep 0.5
play 64
sleep 0.5
play 67
sleep 1
play 64
sleep 0.5
play 60
sleep 1

Discovering Loops

Writing out every note became tedious, so I was excited to find I could use loops:

3.times do
  play 60
  sleep 0.5
  play 64
  sleep 0.5
  play 67
  sleep 1
end

Sound Exploration: Synths

Sonic Pi includes many different synthesizers. These became my palette for sound design:

use_synth :saw
play 38
sleep 0.5
use_synth :prophet
play 50
sleep 0.5
use_synth :tb303
play 62