I bookmarked this article on createdigitalmusic.com a while ago (it's from July 2010) and ran into it again today. "Thought and Performance, Live Coding Music, Explained to Anyone – Really" by Peter Kirn contains several simple but thought-provoking ideas about live coding and its relevance in the (traditional) music world.

Is live coding an elitist activity?

Secrets such as why the programming language Lisp inspires religious devotion, or how someone in their right mind would ever consider programming onstage as a form of musical performance, represent the sort of geekery that would seem to be the domain of an elite.

Commenting on Ramsay's video (Algorithms are Thoughts, Chainsaws are Tools):

I doubt very seriously that live coding is the right performance medium for all computer musicians. [..] But Ramsay reveals what live coding music is. It’s compositional improvisation, and code simply lays bare the workings of the compositional mind as that process unfolds. Not everyone will understand the precise meaning of what they see, but there’s an intuitive intimacy to the odd sight of watching someone type code. It’s honest; there’s no curtain between you and the wizard.

An interesting comment from a reader puts forward what I'd call the 'live coding as programming virtuosity' view:

The live coding thing is clearly an amazing talent. I admire anyone who can do that, but it does seem pretty much a sophisticated parlor trick unless the resulting music can stand on its own. The question becomes: were you to hear the piece without observing the live coding performance, would it stand up, or is the quality of the piece augmented by the way in which it was composed? Is a decent painting painted by someone who paints blindfolded something I would rather see than an excellent painting by someone who paints in a conventional fashion? Because unless the live coder can create something I would enjoy listening to on my portable media player, I feel like music takes a back seat to the musician, which is truly peculiar. [...] This is not to say live coding is something to be ignored, but where in history have we ever asked this question? Does the musician matter more than the music?

And another, even more critical comment:

It is not about letting the audience in at all. It's about cultivating a stage presence of virtuosic technical wizardry. No one in the audience understands the code, and that's why everyone marvels at the "magic". Worse still, it's Lisp, a particularly archaic and obfuscated computer language.

So what?

I think this is all very useful to read, as it shows what non-specialists may think of live coding. I've asked myself similar questions many times but have never really reached a clear conclusion. Is live coding a music-making activity, or is it just programming wizardry?

I personally got into live coding as a musician first, and only afterward as a programmer. As a result, I tend to see it as some sort of advanced music-making tool. However, interestingly enough, in order to make that tool match my musical taste and composition style, I had to become an expert at programming the live coding environment. While doing that, I sort of lost the closeness to the 'instrument'—something you'd have all the time if you play a piano or a guitar. With no closeness, you end up in the role of 'music programmer', worrying about mathematical structures and time recursions rather than notes and feelings.

It's a cyclical process, actually. You gain competency with some programming pattern that lets you express your musical ideas quickly and efficiently. Then you think of different ideas, but you can't put them into code easily, so you have to step back, abandon the musical dimension temporarily, and hack some new programming structures. Which makes me think: maybe that's what's so cool about it. Live coding environments are malleable meta-instruments that let you create (software) music instruments.

So the music—the end result—is definitely part of it. But the process, the how in the music creation business, is also what we have in focus here. In fact, this process is also eminently creative (and here lies the difference from many other digital music 'creation' tools). Perhaps most importantly, this process is so abstracted and codified that it feels as if it represented some sort of essence of creativity.