Workshop (0.9.10)
This tutorial is based on Tidalcycles version 0.9.10. Some of the latest features (post 1.0.0) will not be presented. Major features and changes were added post 1.0. This tutorial should still work as an introduction to Tidal but might not present the most recent and exciting features.
Welcome to this Tidal Cycles tutorial. This is designed to be used as a worksheet during hands-on beginner/mixed workshops, and is based on Tidalcycles version 0.9.10. By Lucy Cheesman, adapted to wiki format by Alex McLean.
Getting started
Once everything is installed, follow the following startup procedure each time.
- Launch SuperDirt - In SuperCollider, type
'SuperDirt.start'and run the code by holding downCtrland pressingEnter(while your cursor is on the same line as the code). - Launch Tidal Cycles - In Atom, start a new file and save it with a
.tidalextension (e.g.examples.tidal).
Notes in Haskell
Haskell is using double dashes -- at the beginning of a line to denotate a comment. A comment is a piece of code that will be ignored by the interpreter. You can use comments to take notes in your code. You can also use comments to ignore a specific line or pattern:
–- I'm a comment
-- this pattern will not play
-- d1 $ s "bd hh sn hh"
-- "fast 2" will be ignored
d1
-- $ fast 2
$ s "hh*8"
Basic patterns
The basic format for making sound in Tidal looks like this:
d1 $ sound "drum"
You can stop making a sound using silence:
d1 $ silence
Pick a different sound from the same set, with ::
d1 $ sound "drum:1"
Default sample library
Some of the samples which come with Tidal are listed below. Try some out!
flick sid can metal future gabba sn mouth co gretsch mt arp h cp
cr newnotes bass hc tabla bass0 hh bass1 bass2 oc bass3 ho odx
diphone2 house off ht tink perc bd industrial pluck trump printshort
jazz voodoo birds3 procshort blip drum jvbass psr wobble drumtraks koy
rave bottle kurt latibro rm sax lighter lt arpy feel less stab ul
You can see what other sounds there are (or add your own) by looking in the Dirt-Samples folder. You can find it via the SuperCollider menu: 'File > Open user support directory > downloaded-quarks > Dirt-Samples'. Make a sequence:
d1 $ sound "bd hh sn hh"
The more steps in the sequence, the faster it goes:
d1 $ sound "bd bd hh bd sn bd hh bd"
This is because of the way Tidal handles time. There is a universal ‘cycle’ (sort of like a musical 'bar') which is always running. Tidal will play all of the sounds between the speech marks in one cycle, unless we tell it not to (we’ll learn how to do that later). You’ll also notice Tidal will space the sounds out evenly within the cycle Which means we can end up with polyrhythmic structures (more on those later). We can change the length of the cycle using setcps (where cps stands for cycles per second) - this is a bit like bpm (beats per minute).
setcps 0.6
You can use d1, d2, d3...d9 to play multiple sequences at the same time:
d2 $ sound "sn sn:2 sn bd sn"
You can stop all the running patterns with hush.
You can pause everything by changing the cycle length to a negative number (remember to put negative numbers in brackets).
setcps (-1)
Start it up again with a positive number
setcps 0.6
Or you can solo one channel:
d1 $ sound "arpy cp arpy:2"
d2 $ sound "sn sn:2 bd sn"
solo 2
-- now only the second pattern will be playing
unsolo 2
-- now both will be playing, again
More variety
Let's add some more variety to our sequences:
Add a silence/rest with ~:
d1 $ sound "bd ~ sn:3 bd sn:5 ~ bd:2 sn:2"
Fit a subsequence into a step with square brackets:
d1 $ sound "bd [bd cp] bd bd"
This can make for flexible time signatures:
d1 $ sound "[bd bd sn:5] [bd sn:3]"
You can put subsequences inside subsequences:
d1 $ sound "[[bd bd] bd sn:5] [bd sn:3]"
Keep going..
d1 $ sound "[[bd [bd bd bd bd]] bd sn:5] [bd sn:3]"
You can repeat a step with *:
d1 $ sound "bd sd*2"
This works with subsequences too:
d1 $ sound "bd [sd cp]*2"
Or you can do the opposite using /:
d1 $ sound "bd sn/2"
d1 $ sound "bd [sn cp]/2"
* works by 'speeding up' a step to play it multiple times. / works by 'slowing it down'.
We can also schedule patterns across cycles using < and >:
d1 $ sound "bd <sd cp arpy>"
d1 $ sound "<bd sn> <sd [cp cp]> <bd [cp cp]>"
Effects
Tidal has lots of effects we can use to change the way things sound. vowel is a filter which adds a vowel sound -- try a, e, i, o and u:
d1 $ sound "drum drum drum drum" # vowel "a"
We create patterns of effects in much the same way we create patterns of sounds. We call these effect and sound patterns 'control patterns'. So:
d1 $ sound "drum drum drum drum" # vowel "a o e e"
Remember that we can use "<>" to schedule across cycles:
d1 $ sound "drum drum drum drum" # vowel "<a o e e>"
You can add a non-vowel letter to pause the vowel effect:
d1 $ sound "drum drum drum drum" # vowel "a o p p"
Tidal does its best to map patterns across to one another:
d1 $ sound "drum drum drum drum" # vowel "a o e"
The structure comes from the left - try swapping the parameters:
d1 $ vowel "a o ~ i" # sound "drum"
gain changes the volume of different sounds:
d1 $ sound "bd hh sn:1 hh sn:1 hh" # gain "1 0.7 0.5"
speed and note are used for pitching samples. speed affects the speed of playback (e.g. 2 = up an octave):
d1 $ sound "numbers:1 numbers:2 numbers:3 numbers:4" # speed "1 1.5 2 0.5"
Or we can take the pattern from the speed parameter:
d1 $ speed "1 2 4" # sound "jungbass:6"
note pitches the sample up in semitones (e.g. 12 = up an octave):
d1 $ up "0 ~ 12 24" # sound "jungbass:6"
pan allows us to create stereo effects (0 = left, 0.5 = middle, 1 = right):
d1 $ sound "numbers:1 numbers:2 numbers:3 numbers:4" # pan "0 0.5 1"
shape adds distortion (but be careful - it also makes the sound much louder):
d1 $ sound "kurt:4 kurt:4" # shape "0 0.78" # gain "0.7"
Learn more about effects
You can take a look at the Basics > Effects section to learn more about effects and to see the complete list of effects. We also suggest you to take a look at the Basics > Oscillators section to see how you can apply an LFO to some of these effects.
Transforming patterns
We can start to make much more complex patterns using transformations. Using functions like slow you can start to transcend the cycle. slow stretches the pattern over more cycles:
Slow, fast and hurry
d1 $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
d1 $ slow 2 $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
fast squashes the pattern into less than one cycle. You might also see people writing density - it’s the same thing. Take a look:
fast 0.5 is the same as slow 2!
d1 $ fast 2 $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
d1 $ fast 0.5 $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
hurry is similar to fast, but also applies a speed transformation:
d1 $ sound "arpy arpy arpy:1 arpy:2"
d1 $ hurry 2 $ sound "arpy arpy arpy:1 arpy:2"
d1 $ hurry 0.5 $ sound "arpy arpy arpy:1 arpy:2"
Reorganise patterns
You can reverse a pattern with rev:
d1 $ rev $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
Or play it forwards and then backwards with palindrome:
d1 $ palindrome $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
iter starts the pattern at a different point each cycle, shifting it the given number of times until it gets back to where it started:
d1 $ iter 4 $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
every allows us to schedule transformations or effects in different cycles. The following example will play twice as fast every four cycles:
d1 $ every 4 (fast 2) $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
... or you could schedule an effect in the same way, using #:
d1 $ every 4 (# vowel "a o") $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
jux (short for juxtapose) takes a transformation or an effect and plays it in one speaker the original pattern plays in the other speaker:
d1 $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
d1 $ jux (rev) $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
d1 $ jux (hurry 2) $ sound "arpy arpy arpy:1 arpy:2"
chunk applies a transformation or an effect to a different part of the pattern each time. For example with 4 as a parameter, it will step through each quarter of the cycle.
d1 $ chunk 4 (hurry 2) $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
d1 $ chunk 4 (# speed 2) $ sound "alphabet:0 alphabet:1 alphabet:2 alphabet:3"
Even further into transformations
More than one transformation is possible! You can chain them together using .:
d1 $ jux (rev . (slow 1.5)) $ sound "arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3"
Remember that (almost) everything is a pattern so we can apply these transformations to our effects too:
d1 $ sound "jvbass [jvbass jvbass] jvbass ~" # note "1 [3 5] 7"
d1 $ sound "jvbass [jvbass jvbass] jvbass ~" # iter 3 (note "1 [3 5] 7")
What about slowing down or scaling (using scale) sine and saw?
Different kind of patterns
What is pattern, anyway? Let's think about some different kinds of pattern and how Tidal can represent them.
Cyclic / repetitive
We can use n to choose samples from a folder, this allows us to apply patterns there too:
d1 $ n "0 1 2 3" # sound "arpy"
run is a short way of writing out sequential patterns:
d1 $ n (run 4) # sound "arpy"
or we can use:
d1 $ n "0 .. 3" # sound "arpy"
Symmetry
d1 $ slow 2 $ n "0 1 2 3 3 2 1 0" # sound "arpy"
d1 $ palindrome $ n (run 4) # sound "arpy"
Polymetric / polyrhythmic sequences
Play two subsequences at once by using square brackets (sort of like one big subsequence!) separating with a comma:
d1 $ sound "[voodoo voodoo:3, arpy arpy:4 arpy:2]"
If you use curly brackets instead of square you get a different effect. With square brackets both halves of the sequence are fitted into the cycle (polyrhythm). With curly brackets the pulse is set by the left hand pattern. The right hand pattern can then overlap (or underlap!) (polymeter):
d1 $ sound "[voodoo voodoo:3, arpy arpy:4 arpy:2]"
d1 $ sound "{voodoo voodoo:3, arpy arpy:4 arpy:2}"
d1 $ sound "[drum bd hh bd, can can:2 can:3 can:4 can:2]"
d1 $ sound "{drum bd hh bd, can can:2 can:3 can:4 can:2}"
d1 $ sound "[bd sn, can:2 can:3 can:1, arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3 arpy:5]"
d1 $ sound "{bd sn, can:2 can:3 can:1, arpy arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3 arpy:5}"
Euclidean rhythm/Bjorklund
If you give two numbers in brackets after an element in a pattern, then Tidal will try to distribute the first number of sounds equally across the second number of steps:
d1 $ sound "bd(5,8)"
You can use this notation within a single element of a pattern:
d1 $ sound "bd(3,8) sn*2"
d1 $ sound "bd(3,8) sn(5,8)"
You can also add a third parameter, which ‘rotates’ the pattern so it starts on a different step:
d1 $ sound "bd(5,8,2)"
Randomness
Randomness can help us quickly introduce character and variation into our patterns. sometimes works a bit like every, but instead of happening after a set period, changes have a random chance of appearing:
d1 $ sometimes (# speed "2") $ sound "drum*8"
often (75%) works like sometimes (50%) but happens more often:
d1 $ often (# speed "2") $ sound "drum*8"
irand generates a random integer up to the number specified. (e.g. to play a random sample):
d1 $ sound "arpy(3,8)" # n (irand 16)
rand generates a random decimal between 0 and 1:
d1 $ sound "tink*16" # gain rand
You can use degradeBy to remove random elements. The number indicates how likely a sample is to play:
d1 $ degradeBy 0.2 $ sound "tink*16"
(degrade on its own is the same as degradeBy 0.5)
Or, you can use ? to remove sounds with a 50% likelihood:
d1 $ sound "bd sn:2? bd sn?"
Manipulating Samples
So far we've just used short samples. Longer samples can cause us some problems if we’re not careful. Let’s see what happens with a long sample:
d1 $ sound "bev"
-- wait a bit, then..
hush
As you can hear, Tidal will keep triggering the sample each cycle, even if it’s very long. Even if you stop the pattern playing, you will still need to listen while the samples play out. You can use cut to truncate the sample when the next one is triggered:
d1 $ sound "bev" # cut 1
The number in cut define a group, so you can play with interference across different patterns:
d1 $ sound "bev ~" # cut 1
d2 $ slow 4 $ sound "pebbles ~" # cut 1
legato also truncates samples, but using a fixed length:
d1 $ sound "bev ~ bev ~" # legato 1
We can also chop samples for a granular synthesis effect:
d1 $ chop 32 $ sound "bev"
striate is similar to chop but organises the playback in a different way:
d1 $ slow 4 $ chop 4 $ sound "arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3 arpy:4"
d1 $ slow 4 $ striate 4 $ sound "arpy:1 arpy:2 arpy:3 arpy:4"
randslice chops the sample into pieces and then plays back a random one each cycle:
d1 $ randslice 32 $ sound "bev"
We can also use loopAt to fit samples to a set number of cycles:
d1 $ loopAt 8 $ sound "bev"
As always we can add patterns and transformations to these functions, or combine them for interesting effects:
d1 $ loopAt "<8 4 16>" $ chop 64 $ sound "bev*4" # cut 1
d1 $ rev $ loopAt 8 $ chop 128 $ sound "bev"