Raspberry Pi Hardware & A Lisp Brain (with Dimitris Kyriakoudis)

Developer Voices

Dimitris Kyriakoudis is a researcher, programmer and musician who's combining all three talents to build dedicated music hardware. Specifically a device called the µseq, which reads Lisp programs and uses them to drive synthesizers to make music. In this episode we go through the full platform that he's building, from soldering resistors to an RPi chip, up through writing a Lisp interpreter, to the design ideas that make Lisp a good choice for composing both software and music.

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uSeq Homepage: https://www.emutelabinstruments.co.uk/useq/

Emute Lab’s Homepage: https://www.emutelab.org/

Buy a uSeq: https://www.signalsounds.com/emute-lab-instruments-useq-live-coding-voltage-generator-eurorack-module/

Build a uSeq (DIY Kit): https://www.thonk.co.uk/shop/emute-lab-useq/

SICP (book): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs

Machina Bristronica (expo): https://machinabristronica.uk/

Sonic Pi: https://sonic-pi.net/

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

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0:00 Intro

2:20 What is µseq?

5:40 Live Coding As Another Instrument

17:42 Why Choose Lisp?

25:03 Different Dialects For Different Musical Tasks?

32:34 Live Coding As Academic Research

44:11 How Do You Fabricate Production Hardware?

49:00 The Triple-E Triangle

1:09:53 How Well Has This Theory Worked Out?

1:20:01 What's This Like To Play Live?

1:25:17 Comparisons With Sonic Pi

1:33:06 Outro