Music at IndiaFOSS with strudel.cc

My notes about an impromptu live coding music performance at IndiaFOSS 2025

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2 min

My friend Kaustubh and I wanted to do a coffee pop-up at IndiaFOSS 2025 and talk about all the fun ways to get over-caffeinated. I suggested that I could do a low-effort music set on the side using strudel.cc. We both agreed that this was a good idea. After speaking to one of the organisers, he suggested that it might be a better idea to just do a workshop about strudel, two days before the conference, so the pressure was on. I worked late to come up with examples of interesting things that could be taught in an hour. The final structure of the discussion came down to the following:

  1. What is music? How is it different from any other collection of sounds? - Not that I have an answer or strong opinions about this, but still something worth thinking about
  2. What makes different forms of popular music? - Talk about some form of dance music that are easy to replicate with strudel like jungle, dance music with tresillo using euclid(3,8)
  3. Humanizing music - Music played by machines can be a little too exact, we can try to make it a little groovy, lop-sided, and human with late(), early(), speed(), sometimes(), degradeBy()
  4. Parameters for dynamic performances - Using slider(), mouseX, mouseY, accX, rotZ for controlling parameters
  5. Putting on a performance - This is something I’ve felt is necessary for many audiences that listen to music. Even if I’m playing music that isn’t particularly moving to me, matching the audience’s energy is important. Looking engaged and busy goes a long way
  6. Collaborative jam using flok - Consider alternatives if internet is patchy in the Devroom

Demos

The following are demos I haphazardously cooked up the night before my workshop, each demo had a purpose to serve:

Sliders, random notes, polyrhythms

Chords, sounds

Outro song to jam to

The “talk”

What was supposed to be a low-effort coffee pop-up, and then an hour long workshop in Devroom 2, became an impromptu talk because a speaker in Audi 2 cancelled last minute. I did not have enough time to change the format of the workshop to better suit a presentation so I had to improvise. I have the following wishes about how the talk should have gone:

  1. Talk less about different forms of music that can be created and focus on gearing people up for a jam that they can enjoy and feel a part of
  2. Operate flok better using line-by-line execution
  3. Invite Anuvrat on stage to jam with his harmonica
  4. Hang around outside Audi 2 to gather people to jam outside Devroom 1

I had envisioned this to be a relatively low-stakes where I could just run away from the pop-up if something didn’t quite work right, but it ended up being high-stakes in comparison. I’m hoping me and Kaustubh end up doing the coffee pop-up at some point.