BuboQuark
What is this?
BuboQuark is a collection of methods and hacks I have found to make live coding easier on SuperCollider. Since the Quark itself does not bring much value and does not change SuperCollider radically, I have thought about creating this website to document my findings and help other people get started. This small website takes inspiration from how to co34pt livecode, another great read. BuboQuark, thus, can be said to be:
- a small Quark to setup SuperCollider for live coding and sound exploration.
- a companion tutorial website to learn how to use that setup and SuperCollider.
BuboQuark can be thought of as my personal SuperCollider configuration. It twists it just enough simply for my own convenience. Internally, it relies a lot on JITLib, Patterns and NodeProxies. It truly feels like a collection of tips and hacks found on the internet.
What does it talk about?
I am a big fan of live coding and I have been practicing it for a while. I have created the Sardine and Topos live coding environments. Writing code to make music live is part of my daily musical practice. Like anybody else, I like to have many different tools to make music. I have been using SuperCollider for a long time, but most of the time using it as an audio backend and talking to it through Python, Haskell, JavaScript and so on. I never really learned to play it live. I have some requirements for a tool to be usable in a live context and most specifically as a part of my musical practice:
- I need a powerful sequencer / scheduler for musical events
- I need to be able to talk with other softwares / devices easily
- I need a playground for audio synthesis and experimenting with sounds
- I need to be able to play with my friends and synchronize easily
Everything else is accessory and I can easily live without it (graphical interfaces, widgets, etc). SuperCollider, out of the box, ticks all the boxes. I can do everything using just that tool and it's a great thing since it is available on most platforms and doesn't consume a lot of resources by default.
What music can I make using it?
My interest for electronic music ranges from experimental and noise to Algorave club-like music. I also like to slice sounds, to play around with oscillators, filters, delays and modular synths. Consequently, you will find a lot about this here and not so much about traditional music production or composition.