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Comment by sjm | Hacker News Reader

Also worth checking out is Sam Aaron's current project, Sonic-Pi: http://sonic-pi.net

Sam Aaron is so inspirational to see in person - so focused on achieving something of cultural significance (teaching a generating to code by drawing them into music-via-code), so effective in his mission. I can't recommend enough seeing him, or having uk as a keynote speaker, or having him as an amazing dj at your conference.

Sonic-pi (and overtone, which was my first intro to this stuff) is a wonderful piece of creative software on its own, but combined with a human it's really a new form of art.

Totally agree, this is great stuff. Every school could have a "music programming lab" with inexpensive Sonic Pi workstations. They are easy to mass produce. I hope teams of parents get together and fund these for their local schools. I put together my own from a Pi 2 and mostly spare parts.

    Pi 2, case, power supply (Adafruit $65 shipped)
    8g Micro SD w/ Raspian Linux  (spare parts)
    Keyboard, Mouse        (spare parts)
    Speakers or headphones (spare parts)
    HDMI, Ethernet cables  (spare parts)
    Monitor                (just used my TV)

You can also run Sonic-Pi on a PC/Mac, which would let some kids continue their explorations outside of the lab.

Speaking of funding, Sam has a Patreon page to support his amazing work (and transitively the children learning to code with his tools). It's definitely worth supporting with a few quid a month at https://patreon.com/samaaron

Rolling Stone thinks very highly of Sonic Pi -

"The shadowy DJ sets, knob-tweaking noise and fogbank ambient of many Moogfest performers was completely demystified and turned into simple numbers and letters that you could see in action. Dubbed "the live coding synth for everyone," it truly seemed less like a performance and more like an invitation to code your own adventure."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/live-reviews/moogfest-2016...

Wow, really happy that you shared this - a friend and I were looking for something just like this!

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