Strudel and Hydra

Last Updated or created 2025-11-24

(Live real time using text (code) to make music and visuals)

Last week, I discovered Strudel.
I was playing around with it and thought: “This would be perfect for Tyrone”.
He is/was the main musical artist in our Group.

Strudel REPL is a web-based, live coding environment for creating music, based on the Tidal Cycles pattern language. It allows users to write and edit code in a browser to instantly hear the music it produces, with features like visual feedback and an interactive tutorial to help beginners and experts. The “REPL” stands for Read-Eval-Print Loop, a common term for interactive programming environments where you can type code, and the system immediately evaluates it and prints the result. 

Check it out on : https://strudel.cc/

Below a strudel example

I can make some simple patterns, but I discovered that it can be used multiuser with realtime synthesizer named Hydra.
I’m better doing visuals, than creating realtime digital music.
Check out https://www.henriaanstoot.nl/?s=shaders – for my previous shader programming posts.
(I love playing real instruments, let’s keep it that way.)

Hydra video synth is a free, open-source, live-coding environment for creating real-time visuals that runs in a web browser. It uses JavaScript and WebGL to allow users to “patch” together different visual sources and transformations, similar to an analog modular synthesizer, to generate effects like video feedback, generative patterns, and audio-reactive visuals. 

So using https://flok.cc we can start a multiuser session with realtime live coding.

So the first test session, learning to use Hydra and Strudel together over the internet. Plan is to do a live session for others using a screen projector.

Left Tyrone (Strudel) right me with Hydra.

In the last few days, I made some examples using hydra.

These examples use Microphone for sound reactive, and Webcam for embedded effects.
NOTE: These are only in your browser session, nothing is being recorded/stored.

You can check some examples here :

https://media.henriaanstoot.nl/hydra/

UPDATE : Controlling Hydra input using my DIY Midi Controller (see other post) (Music is NOT related, no microphone input)

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