The purpose of this study was to investigate perceptions of high school students who made music with code in Sonic Pi. This qualitative multiple case study focused on individuals in an extracurricular club at a public charter high school who volunteered to participate on-site and remotely asynchronously via Canvas learning management system. This study was guided by five research questions, including: (1) What musical ideas, if any, do participants report learning or demonstrate through making music with code in Sonic Pi? (2) How does making music with code impact participants’ perceptions of their music making? (3) How does making music with code impact participants’ perceptions of their ability to learn to make music? (4) How does making music with code impact participants’ interest in music courses? (5) How does making music with code impact participants’ interest in computer science courses? Participants completed research study materials, including a series of tutorials for Sonic Pi. Data included answers to questionnaires and surveys, multimedia artifacts including the source code and exported audio of participants’ music making, and interviews of participants that were codified and analyzed in two cycles, utilizing descriptive coding, values coding, and longitudinal coding. Participants’ code and multimedia artifacts revealed a close alignment to the four properties of sound, including: pitch, duration, intensity/amplitude, and timbre. Participants’ artifacts revealed themes and demonstrated ideas extending beyond the four properties, including: form, non-traditional music notation, and randomization. Participants all agreed their coded artifacts are music. Additionally, participants’ varied responses about musicianship and composers suggests that making music is something anyone can engage in, regardless of how one identifies themself. All participants agreed that Sonic Pi is a useful tool for learning and understanding musical concepts and that Western staff notation is not required knowledge for making music. Participants’ interests in music or computer science courses were impacted by their prior experiences in music and/or coding. This study concludes with a discussion of themes based on the findings.

With increased availability of smartphones, game consoles and computers with capabilities of synthesizing procedural music in real time comes the challenge of realizing new tools for generative music composition for games, inter-media art and musical live performance.This work defines a new method of creating music, “procedural sequencing”, and it presents a musical software that attempts to solve some of the design challenges of bridging interactive elements and more traditional tools for music composition. The software combines aspects of live coding with tracker sequencing.

The practice of “listening with the eyes” has a remarkably long history, which in the Western tradition of notated music can be traced back to at least the 16th century. The usage of musical figures or extramusical references leading to literature or fine art or even drawing with melodic lines could be considered a common effect of this practice. Music history, after intermedia and multimedia development in the 20th century, is now heading towards code-based performance. The crucial questions are: What is being performed: music, notation, or the process of creation? And who is the performer and who is the audience?

Submitted by isabela.moljf@hotmail.com (isabela.moljf@hotmail.com) on 2017-06-01T12:42:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 guilhermemartinslumhani.pdf: 2454325 bytes, checksum: ac5b21618158e2916e391e0fbc6f82d0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-06-02T15:14:26Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 guilhermemartinslumhani.pdf: 2454325 bytes, checksum: ac5b21618158e2916e391e0fbc6f82d0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-02T15:14:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 guilhermemartinslumhani.pdf: 2454325 bytes, checksum: ac5b21618158e2916e391e0fbc6f82d0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-31 / FAPEMIG - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais / Este documento discute uma versão sintetizada de uma técnica polivalente cujo nome é live coding, suas construções históricas na Música, e uma simulação de improvisação tonal guiada por improvisação com linguagens de programação. Na Introdução (ver p. xv) apresentamos uma definição de live coding. A definição destaca o fazer musical, mas não exclúi outras potências artísticas. No Capítulo 1 (ver p. 1) destacamos um mecanismo criativo desta técnica em dois contextos não musicais. No Capítulo 2 (ver p. 13) listamos períodos de atividades musicais que prototiparam e formalizaram o mecanismo criativo do primeiro capítulo. No Capítulo 3 (ver p. 31) analisamos uma proposição musical, um vídeo intitulado A Study in Keith de Sorensen e Swift (2009), de acordo com o mecanismo mental do primeiro capítulo. A contribuição deste trabalho para a musicologia brasileira é a organização historiográfica de uma técnica ainda pouco elaborada em português. / This document presents a synthesized version of a versatile technique whose name is live coding, its historical buildings in music, and a simulation of a tonal improvisation, guided by improvisation with programming languages. In the Introduction (see p. xv), we present a definition of live coding. The definition highlights a focus on music, but does not exclude other artistic powers. In Chapter 1(see p. 1), we highlight a creative mechanism of this technique in two unmusical contexts. In Chapter 2 (see p. 13), we listed periods of musical activities that prototyped and formalized the creative engine of the first chapter. In Chapter 3 (see p. 31), we analyzed a musical proposition, a Sorensen and Swift’s video entitled A Study in Keith (2009), according to the first mental mechanism chapter. The contribution of this work to the Brazilian musicology is a historiographical organization of a technique still little developed in portuguese.

This dissertation speculates on culture, social spheres, and programming to gain insight into how computer platforms can be (re)thought and (re)designed around the consciousness and struggles of Latin American communities. This dissertation uses an interdisciplinary methodology emphasizing approaches to live-coding performance, platform design and software development, participatory action research, and interpretive and semiotic analysis. The research in this dissertation starts with the argument that computer languages are influenced by social spheres (e.g., science and arts), economic models (e.g., knowledge economy), communication systems (e.g., natural language), and infrastructures (e.g., software collaboration protocols and institutions). Next, it is discussed how I deployed this argument by ideating and coding a computer language based on specific social spheres (i.e., live coding practice and popular music), communication systems (i.e., Spanish), and infrastructures (i.e., cultural centers and online spaces) of Hispanoamerica. Finally, this computer-music language is compared and contrasted against collective reflections and uses by this dissertation’s author and members of the general public through a series of conversation circles and live coding performances. This research results in developing Seis8s, a computer-music language inflected by Spanish constructs borrowed from Latin dance music. Seis8s blends Latin American music sensibilities and live coding techno-politics to promote critical reflection. Seis8s emphasizes resistance to asymmetric types of computer-music abstraction by bringing Afro-Latin instruments and rhythms to the center of the technology and the performance. Results of this research also include ten public presentations using Seis8s involving individual and collective live coding performances and conference presentations. These public presentations showcased Seis8s and promoted reflection toward universal understandings of bodies, culture, politics, and economies of these technological and artistic milieus. This research also gives insight into mestizaje and latinidad as concepts still present in the belief systems and ways of knowing Spanish speakers in Latin America and, consequently, in the software they develop. Mestizaje and latinidad are challenged collectively by positioning the white-mestizo ideology as a shared problem that could be resisted through reflection on the irreducibility of the Latin American identity and its potential to coexist with other identities. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)