Module 1: what we’ve covered Copy Copy

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>"