by Anton Lejon (2020)
A Sonic Pi implementation of
Clapping Music for two performers
by Steve Reich (1972)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzkOFJMI5i8
Sonic pi
Just copy the code into Sonic Pi and press run (or download Snapping Music.rb and open it in Sonic Pi). It's pretty fun to play around with the global variables at the top.
One morning I decided to try Sonic Pi, and Clapping music has a special place in my heart and felt like a piece that's just begging to be programmed. The goal was to implement Clapping Music sounding as close to a live performance of the original score as possible. Each time the code is run it will sound slightly different, but still be within the confines of the score. Modern live interpretations seem to have a bit of an accent on the single clap and fewer repetitions per measure, and a softer clap throughout than the earlier performances did, but I've stuck to the early version. (And obviously replaced claps with snaps, since they were available in the default Sonic Pi sample library.)
Play around and enjoy!