What if you made music live — on stage, in front of an audience — entirely by writing code?

Alex McLean (research fellow, Sheffield; co-founder of Tidal Cycles and Strudel live coding environments; co-curator of Algorave and Alpaca Festival) joins the podcast to explore algorithmic music, live coding performance, and a worldview where everyone is already a technologist.

We discuss South Indian Carnatic konnakol rhythms, the deceptive complexity of counting to five, collaborating with Peruvian khipu scholar Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, and the thorny question of cultural appropriation when heritage algorithms meet modern code. Alex also shares how the first Alpaca Festival united jugglers, textile artists, paper vinyl records, and midnight Algoraves.

🔗 Links & Resources:

• Alex McLean website: https://slab.org
• Tidal Cycles live coding environment: https://tidalcycles.org
• Strudel live coding environment: https://strudel.cc
• Alpaca Festival: https://2025.algorithmicpattern.org/sheffield/

📩 melodicminds@gmail.com | 🎵 @MelodicMinds

How do you compose music that leaves room for the performers to bring themselves to it — and still sounds exactly right?

Professor Jane Stanley (Professor of Composition, University of Glasgow; founding member of the Young Academy of Scotland) joins the podcast to talk about her music composition process — from fully-notated works to semi-improvised, indeterminate pieces tailored for specific performers and spaces.

Jane also discusses an earlier project with a nutritionist exploring synesthesia and tasting music, and shares her vision for making composition genuinely accessible: a Coursera upskilling course for teachers and the public, and a future book for people who have never thought of themselves as composers.

🔗 Links & Resources:

• Jane Stanley on Spotify
• Jane Stanley website: https://janestanley.com/
• Jane Stanley YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@janestanley495

📩 melodicminds@gmail.com | 🎵 @MelodicMinds

What if you could hear a molecule? Or encode the altitude profile of a Scottish hillside into a guitar line?

Professor Colin Campbell — chemist, musician, and University of Edinburgh chair of medical and biological spectroscopy — has done both. In this episode, Colin charts his journey from a Fulbright sabbatical in Boulder, Colorado (where he spent months turning protein sequences into listenable music) to a Creative Scotland-funded album, West of Fjord.

We discuss data sonification techniques, the Shortbread Tin Collective, the Viking history of Loch Bracadale, Joe Strummer's unexpected memorial on a Skye hillside, and why sonification of data is still a holy grail in scientific communication.

🔗 Links & Resources:

• West of Fjord album & Music About Science playlist (University of Edinburgh School of Chemistry YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@UniversityofEdinburgh
• Colin Campbell / University of Edinburgh profile: https://www.ed.ac.uk/chemistry

📩 melodicminds@gmail.com | 🎵 @MelodicMinds