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all framework project protocol

Sonic Pi — The Live Coding Music Synth ↗

project

sonic-pi.net · 2012

Live-coding environment that treats music as a programming problem: sequences, loops, concurrency, and timing
Built on SuperCollider but exposes a Ruby DSL that makes audio synthesis accessible without a signal processing background
Used in education to teach programming through immediate auditory feedback rather than visual output

SuperCollider ↗

project

supercollider.github.io · 1996

Platform for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition with a real-time audio server (scsynth) controlled by a client language (sclang)
Client-server architecture decouples sound generation from control logic — the audio graph runs at audio rate while patterns and scheduling run at control rate
The foundation that Sonic Pi, TidalCycles, and many other live-coding tools build on top of

Tone.js ↗

framework

tonejs.github.io · 2014

Web Audio API framework that provides musical abstractions (transport, instruments, effects) on top of the browser’s low-level audio graph
Handles the hard parts of browser audio: precise scheduling, clock synchronization, and sample-accurate timing using a look-ahead scheduler
Makes the browser a viable platform for sonification — any data source accessible via JavaScript can be mapped to audio parameters in real time

Web Audio API ↗

protocol

MDN · 2011

W3C specification for high-performance audio processing in the browser through a directed graph of audio nodes
The audio graph model (source → processing → destination) maps naturally to data sonification pipelines: connect data to oscillators, filters, and gain nodes
Runs on a separate high-priority thread from the main JavaScript event loop, enabling real-time audio even when the UI thread is busy

TidalCycles ↗

project

tidalcycles.org · 2009

Live-coding environment for music that treats patterns as first-class values — sounds are described by composing, transforming, and combining pattern functions
Built in Haskell but sends OSC messages to SuperCollider; the language is the sequencer, not a GUI
Demonstrates that complex rhythmic and timbral structures emerge from simple pattern transformations applied in sequence

NASA Data Sonification ↗

project

NASA · 2020

NASA’s project translating astronomical data (X-ray, optical, infrared) into sound — each wavelength mapped to a different audio parameter
Demonstrates that sonification reveals patterns invisible in visual representations: periodicities, gradients, and anomalies become audible textures
Validates the core thesis that audio is an underexplored observability channel — if it works for galaxy clusters, it works for system metrics