Live coding music performance is a growing international phenomenon. Live coding can be viewed as a way in which computer programming is used to communicate the musical intentions of the live coder to the computer, which then produces sound as output. Programming skills are embodied in the code, design, abstraction and implementation. Mostly this happens in the mind of the live coder. The live coder writes code to produce sounds in real time. It could be argued that live coding has its foundations in participatory musical performance because live coding involves real-time aesthetic decisions, judgements and feedback while editing code. Most formal learning in music education is seen as a process of engaging in the style characteristics of presentational performances and canonic classical repertoires acquired as a code of knowledge, alongside competence on a musical instrument; this stems from academic ‘acquisition’ models of learning. More informal participatory competence models may involve mastering levels in musicianship by developing one’s identity in relation to the community, as for example in reggae, rock, gamelan and popular music (Philpott and Spruce, 2012). Coding music performance in real-time exists as a much higher sonic abstraction than that of standard Western music notation; it affords the performer the ability to compose in the immediate moment or real time of improvised performance, thus merging improvisation, composition and performance creativities. This creates an urgent need and challenge to design new learning models (and learning spaces) for schools and informal educational contexts, and to better understand and remove the barriers for both teachers and students. It also signals the need for a new model of learning, which emphasises collaboration and collaborative enquiry orchestrated by and between educators, researchers (from education, music and computer science) and programme designers.

Green (2010) outlines the informal educational pedagogies, attitudes and values that popular musicians adopt, and offers concrete educational implications and strategies which inform formal music education. So, if it is assumed that to become a competent member of a music discipline requires learning a specialised vocabulary (this is a hotly debated issue which includes the question of whether reading traditional music notation is required), how should we re-present or co-construct curriculum content beyond the musical canon? If what is taught to students through institutionalised rituals, routines and activities articulates certain rules of engagement for teachers and learners, and communicates certain relations of dominance and subordination through the subtleties of the traditional music curriculum, then how do students see themselves as creators of live coding performance using software programmes such as Sonic Pi? What are the success criteria of learning computer programming skills and how do young people communicate their musical intentions as live coders? How are their programming skills embodied in the code, design, abstraction and implementation, which is the translation of musical intention into computer code? What are teachers’ perceptions of this type of learning and what might assessment criteria and performance categories look like?

In music education, skills and knowledge are considered central to the ‘subject culture’, which is implicated as something that involves both participatory and presentational events such as contemporary pop and classical music concerts, with a high stakes assessment system exerted by the publication of performance tables and pressures through the accountability of teachers within the profession.

Digital musicking and live coding performances are potentially spaces for, and practices of, empowerment which are not presently a featured part of the curriculum in music education and formative assessments: exploring live coding practices, ‘liveness’, running code and changing variables within a prewritten programme in real-time are simply, as yet, not part of the subject culture (Black and Wiliam, 2003).

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