Why computer science matters to musicians
summary
A touchscreen live-rig is built on Ableton with a Python bridge, using Max for Live to access APIs and TouchOSC for custom controls; it runs loopers, a vocoder, resampling, Tornado effects and MIDI buses. Latency and parallelism decide feasibility — audible lag starts around 5–10 milliseconds — and CPU and critical-path summing force architectural tradeoffs. The prototype mostly performs but the onstage demo glitches, Max editor load times and CPU use reveal real engineering limits; a rebuilt rig is underway.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Live music system intro
- 7:59Building this digital instrument
- 12:47Latency and analog vs digital
- 16:15Parallel computing in audio
- 18:02MIDI limitations in Ableton
- 22:08Ableton’s Python API
- 25:21Musician-programmer value
