Sonic Pi v5 Released: A Complete Overhaul for Coding Music
Sam Aaron announces the release of Sonic Pi v5, describing it as more friendly, accessible, powerful, and fun. The update overhauls the interface and synthesis engine, adding features like improved error messages, game controller support, live audio device changes, Link Audio for Ableton Live integration, MIDI clock sync, and a color theme system. The release aims to enhance both learning and live performance.
Sonic Pi is now more friendly, more accessible, more powerful and more fun.
- harwoodr
For those wondering what it actually is, as I was:
"Sonic Pi is your free code-based music creation and performance tool."
- xrd
I love Sonic Pi. I am a terrible musician but I really enjoy finding chords for a song and then putting them into a sonic pi buffer and messing around. U2 started as a cover band, right, so maybe this is a path to becoming musical someday.
The one thing that confuses me about Sonic Pi is the buffers/editor. I always wish I could replace the UI with my own embedded editor (emacs in my case). I would then be able to manage all my songs as files. Right now I hunt for "least crowded" buffer window, comment out the code for the song or songs, and then add my new song. If I had my own embedded editor (like emacs), I could rename buffers to be songs, have an unlimited amount (rather than just ten), integrated version control, etc.
Am I missing something simple about how others use sonic pi?
The big breakthrough of sonic pi is representing music as a highly readable text file. I assume I don't know how to use the built in editor and buffer system because I feel a lot of friction there.
- samaaron
Sonic Pi v5 is released.
Sonic Pi is now more friendly, more accessible, more powerful and more fun.
There's something to excite everyone - from the friendlier error messages, to the pro-audio config, to the new dynamic visuals for performance.
Enjoy!
- sage981
The ChucK comparison holds for the language, but Sonic Pi's draw was always the live-coding loop with a beginner-friendly editor bundled in.
- nazgulsenpai
Every time I click a HN post with the Something Pi naming convention my graybeard brain expects to see an SBC. This is something just about as interesting! I grew up on (and still use) trackers for sequencing. It might be fun to try a similar workflow in this!
- hiccuphippo
How does it compare to https://strudel.cc/ ?
- fitsumbelay
Since my first pi I've always been blown away by sonic pi's capacity and it's price. Surely worth the cost of the Pi itself and then some.
It's so good I feel the rare guilt of not using it enough especially as I see myself as lifelong musically-inclined (skill level is another topic tho ...)
Genuinely grateful to Aaron and everyone who helps keep this project going. Damn near a public good IMHO
- zaphar
I donate to this software because it's so much fun to play around with. My wife (of 30 years as of today) knows way more about music than I do and this is one way for me to connect a little bit with her hobby.