In this first set of lessons what we’ve covered:
That Tidal creates sound with patterns. Patterns are just things that repeat in time. You send a pattern of sounds to Tidal to play by putting d1 $
through d16 $
in front of it the pattern and hitting ctrl-enter on the keyboard.
You can create patterns of sounds by writing an s
and then the structure of the pattern between quotation marks, like this s "bd cp"
.
You make groups inside patterns with square brackets, like s "bd [ht cp]"
. You can make groups out of the same thing with *
:
s "bd*4 hh27*2"
is the same as s "[bd bd bd bd] [hh27 hh27]"
The basic unit of time in TidalCycles is the cycle. By default, a cycle is about two seconds long. The more events you put inside a pattern the faster it plays the events.
Compare s "bd*2"
vs. s "bd*12"
You can make a pattern that changes between cycles with the angle brackets:
s "bd <cp cp*2 hh*27>"