ABSTRACT
A key aspect of modern teaching practices is not just to deliver and share new knowledge, but also to facilitate learning by deepening engagement and participation. Sonic Pi is a powerful new kind of musical instrument with a novel interface. The critical idea here is not just the representation of musical process with a formal language precise enough to be executed by a computer – it is the ability to modify it whilst it is executing. This chapter explores how easy it is to turn musical thoughts into code, how much time it take to type the code for an idea, and how easy it is to find an error. From the very first iteration, Sonic Pi was designed for and iterated within the classroom. Sonic Pi automatically saves the contents of the code so that if the user closes the application, they can re-open the application and their previous work will not be lost.
