Profile: ndr_brt

Mar 3, 2023

Tidal Cyclist	ndr_brt
Location	Italy
Years with Tidal	4 yrs
Other LiveCoding env	Hydra, Supercollider, Threnoscope, ByteBeat
Music available online	Bandcamp
Code online	GitHub
Other music/audio sw	sox, ffmpeg, Ardour, Audacity

Livecoding

What do you like about livecoding in Tidal? What inspires you?

When I met it for the first time everything was a wow, the cycle concept, function composition, mini-notation, patternization… Nowadays I’m still able to find inspiration watching other people livecoding or reading the posts on tidal club, especially when there are custom functions listed.

How do you approach your livecoding sessions?

I always try to start from scratch, when I code alone I usually focus on a single function and try to get everything out of it, while I’m in front of an audience I just go with the flow.

What functions and coding approaches do you like to use?

I’m a huge fan of superimpose (used with the si shortand), especially mixed with hurry, in my “single sample runs” I create layers of the same sample playing at different speed/density to create rhythm and melodic patterns. For example:

let sh t f p = superimpose ((hurry t).f) p

d1
  $ sh 5 id
  $ sh "e" id
  $ sh 3 id
  $ s "sine"

this is a really simple example, and from here you can start and mixup all sort of other functions, I also love chunk, that moves things a lot:

d1
  $ chunk 7 (|* speed 1.5)
  $ sh 5 id
  $ sh "e" id
  $ sh 3 id
  $ s "sine"

The fun is that, if you replace sin with, for example, a percussive sample like bd, here you have a nice drum pattern.

Then to completely unhinge the structure, chew and bite are also good friends:

d1
  $ chew 4 (iter 3 "3 1 0")
  $ chunk 7 (|* speed 1.5)
  $ sh 5 id
  $ sh "e" id
  $ sh 3 id
  $ s "sine"

-- or

d1
  $ bite 4 (iter 5 "3 0 1")
  $ chunk 7 (|* speed 1.5)
  $ sh 5 id
  $ sh "e" id
  $ sh 3 id
  $ s "sine"

I often try to escape from this mindset but at the end I fall into it most of the times.

Do you use Tidal with other tools / environments?

I tried it to control some drum machines circuit bent by me but at the end I find the hardware overcomplicated and I prefer to play soft-synths, especially Supercollider: everything in a box and controllable with the keyboard.
I used Tidal also to draw stuff with p5 during some sessions.

Tidal Contributions

How do you contribute to TidalCycles? What have you worked on?

I learned Haskell only to contribute to Tidal. I’m passionate about reading code and get the insights of the software, on the main codebase I solved some bugs and added some features mainly in the mini-notation section (tidal commits).
I took care of the migration from Travis CI to GitHub Actions.
Atom -> Pulsar: At a certain point I noticed that the Atom Plugin was practically unmaintained so I proposed to be its maintainer, and I brought it back on track. Now Atom has been disbanded but luckily the Pulsar community is vibrant and the Tidal plugin is already fully compatible with it. It was a pretty satisfying migration (Pulsar-tidalcycles).

What motivates you to work on Tidal?

Not to be selfish but most of the work I did had direct impact on the use I’m doing of Tidal, I guess because it’s easy to contribute when you know why something needs to be improved/fixed.

Music

Tell us about your livecoding music.

Well, most of the time it is noisy, sometimes mellow, always not danceable.

How has your music evolved since you have been livecoding?

For sure it changed, I’m not sure it “evolved”, sometimes I think I was more creative when I was learning how to use the instrument, now it’s easier to get into the loop of being repetitive.

What samples or instruments do you like to work with?

I try not to use the default samples nor the default synths, I sometimes write my own synths, sometimes I record my own samples or I get them from various sources.

What projects are you currently working on or planning? What’s next?

I recently finished a record that was a collaboration with Naotodate, that’s a non-livecoding noise friend from Italy (on bandcamp).
Now I’m working to another collaboration record, this time with ETOL, an amazing italian livecoder. To be fair the project it is still in an embryonic state.

Links to your music / recorded livecoding sessions:

Bandcamp
YouTube (not only livecoding) - here are a few of them using TidalCycles
Soundcloud (not really updated)

Other

I’m a software engineer by day and a punk “musician” by night, I played and still play guitar/drums/bass in various bands
I’m also part of Toplap Italia, I organize livecoding shows sometimes
I’ve been a Linux user for like 20 years
I like diy electronics, circuit bending and fixing broken stuff found in the trash
Either I talk too much or I don’t talk at all