NIME 2014 (New Interfaces for Musical Expression)

Improvising with the Threnoscope: Integrating Code, Hardware, GUI, Network, and Graphic Scores
Thor Magnusson
University of Sussex

Short Paper

Live coding emphasises improvisation. It is an art practice that merges the act of musical composition and performance into a public act of projected writing. This paper introduces the Threnoscope system, which includes a live coding micro-language for drone-based microtonal composition. The paper discusses the aims and objectives of the system, elucidates the design decisions, and introduces in particular the code score feature present in the Threnoscope. The code score is a novel element in the design of live coding systems allowing for improvisation through a graphic score, rendering a visual representation of past and future events in a real-time performance. The paper demonstrates how the system’s methods can be mapped ad hoc to GUI- or hardware-based control.