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Comment by velcrovan | Hacker News Reader

From the top of the original link:

> “Velato offers an unusual challenge to programmer-musicians: to compose a musical piece that, in addition to expressing their aims musically, fills the constraints necessary to compile to a working Velato program.”

It seems like Velato’s purpose is to provide an unusual and interesting creative constraint for people who can both code and write music.

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> Velato’s purpose is to provide an unusual and interesting creative constraint for people who can both code and write music

I do both on a professional level and have no idea what this sentence means; that's why I'm asking.

Have you ever sat in front of your favorite DAW version XX and thought, oh wow so many things, what am I going to do?

How about Sonic Pi? Or any modern audio toolset. So much possibility, where to start?

Creative constraint is about opening up pathways by restricting options.

It means come up with a code goal and a music goal, and fulfill both with a Velato program. For example, can you write MIDI file which finds the nth Fibonnaci number and sounds good to your friend when played with a piano instrument (a real one or a sound sample)?

Constraints are not too crazy of a concept. It’s not much different than say, writing a traditional Schoenberg style 12-tone composition.

You would create your tone rows and then write your composition. If you follow the rules, then it is also 12-tone serialism.

Presumably you code and compose in separate contexts, unlike what the sentence describes

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