Sonic Pi

Sonic Pi is a live coding environment based on Ruby, originally designed to support both computing and music lessons in schools, developed by Sam Aaron in the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory^[1] in collaboration with Raspberry Pi Foundation.^[2][3]

Sonic Pi

Screenshot of Sonic Pi
Developer(s)	Sam Aaron and others
Initial release	2012
Stable release	4.5.1 / 26 April 2024; 11 months ago (2024-04-26)
Repository	github.com/sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi
Written in	Ruby, Erlang, Elixir, Clojure, C++, and Qt
Operating system	Linux, macOS, Windows, Raspberry Pi OS
Type	Live coding environment
License	MIT License
Website	sonic-pi.net

Uses

Sam Aaron, creator of Sonic Pi, demonstrating the program

Thanks to its use of the SuperCollider synthesis engine and accurate timing model,^[4] it is also used for live coding and other forms of algorithmic music performance and production, including at algoraves. Its research and development has been supported by Nesta, via the Sonic PI: Live & Coding project.^[5]

See also

• Free and open-source software portal

• Pure Data
• Algorithmic composition
• List of MIDI editors and sequencers
• List of music software

Further reading

• Aaron, Samuel; Blackwell, Alan F.; Burnard, Pamela (2016). "The development of Sonic Pi and its use in educational partnerships: Co-creating pedagogies for learning computer programming". Journal of Music, Technology & Education. 9 (1): 75–94. doi:10.1386/jmte.9.1.75_1. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
• Aaron, Sam. (2016). "Sonic Pi–performance in education, technology and art". International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. 12 (2): 17–178. doi:10.1080/14794713.2016.1227593. S2CID 193662552.
• Sinclair, Arabella (2014). "Educational Programming Languages: The Motivation to Learn with Sonic Pi" (PDF). PPIG: 10. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
• Aaron, Samuel; Blackwell, Alan F. (2013). "From sonic Pi to overtone". Proceedings of the first ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Functional art, music, modeling & design. Farm '13. ACM. pp. 35–46. doi:10.1145/2505341.2505346. ISBN 9781450323864. S2CID 18633884. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
• Aaron, Samuel; Blackwell, Alan F.; Hoadley, Richard; Regan, Tim (2011). A principled approach to developing new languages for live coding (PDF). International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). Oslo, Norway. Retrieved 16 September 2021.
• Aaron, Samuel; Blackwell, Alan F. (2013). "From sonic Pi to overtone: creative musical experiences with domain-specific and functional languages". Proceedings of the First ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Functional Art, Music, Modeling & Design: 35–46. doi:10.1145/2505341.2505346. S2CID 18633884.