I guess I’ve always written songs, but it’s mostly been by accident. Throughout most of my life, I’ve “doodled” with various instruments like piano and ukulele: Playing whatever comes to my head in the moment without too much thought.

It just so happens that when you do this, you can’t help but play many of the same little doodles again and again. When you act in an automatic way, repetition is natural.

The more you play a specific little doodle, the more it gets cemented as something you slip into and out of, whenever you jam. It may not have a clear start or end: It may not work as or be a “song” but it will become clearly recognisable, and it may even grow some different parts, and if you love it enough, it may even grow a name!

I have many many little doodles like this and I enjoy playing all of them. Otherwise they wouldn’t exist.

Many of the doodles remind me— are associated with specific feelings or places or times from my life, and it’s nice to revisit them sometimes, adding different spins on them / approaching them with different interpretations + contexts (crossing over) clashing together thoughts that I’ve had at— I don’t need to try to / to do this intentionally \ remixing It happens automatically doesn’t need to make sense. Are you following?

The point of this blog post is: I notice the same thing happening with live coding. I have the same doodles that I keep coming back to time and time again. Part of me thinks “no I should make something new” but part of me knows better: That I should resist that feeling of shame / embarrassment / guilt I get from repeating something I’ve played before.

But no no I need you to understand that my feelings are stronger than that: I don’t just think it’s “okay” to repeat doodles. I think it’s “good” to repeat doodles, to the extent that I think you “should” repeat doodles and if you don’t repeat doodles then you should start repeating doodles.

It creates this relationship between you and what you make. You get to establish a long term relationship with back and forth between you and the thing. This is important because it allows the thing to keep changing, which allows your art to become about the process and more than just a static artifact at the end.

It also lets your audience / collaborators develop a long-term relationship with you and what you make which is important because because AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

So when you say “Algorave generation, We love repetition” well do you really mean that? Do you love repetition enough to repeat yourself time and time again? or does everything have to be new for you? It might seem like there’s a tension here. On the one hand, the liveness of live coding means that you can make something new every time if you really want to (but why would you do that). The liveness of live coding also means that you’re THERE present together with the rest of the room RIGHT NOW which means… there’s a relationship / interaction going on and ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN and pastagang can play that pasta lick that comes up time and time again and I can go “I love this one!!!” and those who know it can look around and acknowledge each other and feel connected.

Just remember, it’s not from scratch unless you don’t know anyone else in the room, especially yourself, because after all, art is about relationship, and it’s unfair to start with that kind of pre-prepared advantage. I start all my live coding sets by shaving my head and forgetting everything I know, just to be safe

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