Five Top Tips

1. There are no mistakes

The most important lesson to learn with Sonic Pi is that there really are no mistakes. The best way to learn is to just try and try and try. Try lots of different things out, stop worrying whether your code sounds good or not and start experimenting with as many different synths, notes, FX and opts as possible. You’ll discover a lot of things that make you laugh because they sound just awful and some real gems that sound truly amazing. Simply drop the things you don’t like and keep the things you do. The more ‘mistakes’ you allow yourself to make the quicker you’ll learn and discover your personal coding sound.

2. Use the FX

Say you’ve already mastered the Sonic Pi basics of making sounds with sample, play? What’s next? Did you know that Sonic Pi supports over 27 studio FX to change the sound of your code? FX are like fancy image filters in drawing programs except that instead of blurring or making something black and white, you can add things like reverb, distortion and echo to your sound. Think of it like sticking the cable from your guitar to an effects pedal of your choice and then into the amplifier. Luckily, Sonic Pi makes using FX really easy and requires no cables! All you need to do is to choose which section of your code you’d like the FX added to and wrap it with the FX code. Let’s look at an example. Say you had the following code:

sample :loop_garzul

16.times do
  sample :bd_haus
  sleep 0.5
end

If you wanted to add FX to the :loop_garzul sample, you’d just tuck it inside a with_fx block like this:

with_fx :flanger do
  sample :loop_garzul
end

16.times do
  sample :bd_haus
  sleep 0.5
end

Now, if you wanted to add FX to the bass drum, go and wrap that with with_fx too:

with_fx :flanger do
  sample :loop_garzul
end

with_fx :echo do
  16.times do
    sample :bd_haus
    sleep 0.5
  end
end

Remember, you can wrap any code within with_fx and any sounds created will pass through that FX.

3. Parameterise your synths

In order to really discover your coding sound you’ll soon want to know how to modify and control synths and FX. For example, you might want to change the duration of a note, add more reverb, or change the time between echoes. Luckily, Sonic Pi gives you an amazing level of control to do exactly this with special things called optional parameters or opts for short. Let’s take a quick look. Copy this code into a workspace and hit run:

sample :guit_em9

Ooh, a lovely guitar sound! Now, let’s start playing with it. How about changing its rate?

sample :guit_em9, rate: 0.5

Hey, what’s that rate: 0.5 bit I just added at the end? That’s called an opt. All of Sonic Pi’s synths and FX support them and there’s loads to play around with. They’re also available for FX too. Try this:

with_fx :flanger, feedback: 0.6 do
  sample :guit_em9
end

Now, try increasing that feedback to 1 to hear some crazy sounds! Read the docs for full details on all the many opts available to you.

4. Live Code

The best way to quickly experiment and explore Sonic Pi is to live code. This allows you to start off some code and continually change and tweak it whilst it’s still playing. For example, if you don’t know what the cutoff parameter does to a sample, just play around. Let’s have a try! Copy this code into one of your Sonic Pi workspaces:

live_loop :experiment do
  sample :loop_amen, cutoff: 70
  sleep 1.75
end

Now, hit run and you’ll hear a slightly muffled drum break. Now, change the cutoff: value to 80 and hit run again. Can you hear the difference? Try 90, 100, 110…

Once you get the hang of using live_loops you’ll not turn back. Whenever I do a live coding gig I rely on live_loop as much as a drummer relies on their sticks. For more information about live coding check out Section 9 of the built-in tutorial.

5. Surf the random streams

Finally, one thing I love doing is cheating by getting Sonic Pi to compose things for me. A really great way to do this is using randomisation. It might sound complicated but it really isn’t. Let’s take a look. Copy this into a spare workspace:

live_loop :rand_surfer do
  use_synth :dsaw
  notes = (scale :e2, :minor_pentatonic, num_octaves: 2)
  16.times do
    play notes.choose, release: 0.1, cutoff: rrand(70, 120)
    sleep 0.125
  end
end

Now, when you play this, you’ll hear a constant stream of random notes from the scale :e2 :minor_pentatonic played with the :dsaw synth. “Wait, wait! That’s not a melody”, I hear you shout! Well, here’s the first part of the magic trick. Every time we go round the live_loop we can tell Sonic Pi to reset the random stream to a known point. This is a bit like going back in time in the TARDIS with the Doctor to a particular point in time and space. Let’s try it - add the line use_random_seed 1 to the live_loop:

live_loop :rand_surfer do
  use_random_seed 1
  use_synth :dsaw
  notes = (scale :e2, :minor_pentatonic, num_octaves: 2)
  16.times do
    play notes.choose, release: 0.1, cutoff: rrand(70, 120)
    sleep 0.125
  end
end

Now, every time the live_loop loops around, the random stream is reset. This means it chooses the same 16 notes every time. Hey presto! An instant melody. Now, here’s the really exciting bit. Change the seed value from 1 to another number. Say 4923. Wow! Another melody! So, just by changing one number (the random seed), you can explore as many melodic combinations as you can imagine! Now, that’s the magic of code.