Pop-production as problem-solving

give a guest lecture? sure 😊

oh, is it January already?

extempore: a livecoding language

livecoding

outline

• what’s a producer?
• modelling the domain
• crowdsourced livecoding

what I’m gonna do

• learn a new song (by ear!)
• figure out how to turn it into code
• find a bunch of sounds which sound (approximately) like the recording
• lay down a vocal track (maybe)
• make the whole process make sense to you guys

all in 45 minutes ⏲

yikes!

what you’re gonna do

• help me choose the song
• be kind when I make mistakes
• clap politely at the end (even if I flame out)

I'm old...

pop music is produced

what’s a producer?

a producer is someone who makes songs happen

pop songs are characterised by:

• catchy hooks
• repetitive harmonic patterns (e.g. chord progressions)
• processed/synthetic sounds (lots of computers involved in the production)

Quincy Jones

Max Martin

modelling the domain

pedantry alert!

dimensions of the domain

• time
• pitch
• loudness

parameterisation

• time (in beats), e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• pitch (in MIDI note numbers), e.g. middle C as 60, C# as 61, etc.
• loudness (0 is silent, 127 is super loud)

extempore: a livecoding language

extempore is a programming language designed for musical livecoding (written Andrew Sorensen and me)

don’t worry about the syntax, I’ll explain enough for you to follow along

let's go!

what did we learn?

pop music isn’t black magic, it’s a domain with lots of structure/patterns

computers/code are really useful for modelling/exploring this stuff

this is not AI, either