Exploring Musical Form: Digital Scores to Support Live Coding Practice

The management of the musical structures and the awareness of the performer’s processes during a performance are two important aspects of live coding improvisations. To support these aspects, we developed and evaluated two systems, Time_X and Time_Z, for visualizing the musical form during live coding. Time_X allows visualizing an entire performance, while Time_Z provides a detailed overview of the last improvised musical events. Following an autobiographical approach, the two systems have been used in five sessions by the first author of this paper, who created a diary about the experience. These diaries have been analyzed to understand the two systems individually and compare them. We finally discuss the main benefits related to the practical use of these systems, and possible use scenarios.