Welcome to the Mercury Playground! ✌️ ☮️ Make Music, Not War! ☮️ ✌️
Mercury Playground is a free/open-source, beginner-friendly, minimal and human-readable language for the live coding of algorithmic electronic music performances running in the browser
Mercury currently has 2 versions:
- Web version running in the browser (Windows/Mac/Linux) (you're in the right place)
- Original version running in Max8 (Windows/Mac only) go to this repo
🚀 Start coding directly in the playground! (recommended for beginners)
👾 Or code with the latest full version in Max8:
git clone https://github.com/tmhglnd/mercury.git
📟 Build a local app from the browser version with Electron
🙏 Support Mercury by buying me a coffee ko-fi
💬 Join the Mercury Community on Discord
- 📟 Mercury?
- 🎮 What can I do with Mercury?
- 👩💻 Code together with others!
- 🚀 Let's get started!
- 🤓 I like to help
- 🔋 Powered By
- 🙏 Thanks
- 📄 Licenses
Mercury is a free/open-source, beginner-friendly, minimal and human-readable language for the live coding of algorithmic electronic music
All elements of the language are designed around making code more accessible and less obfuscating for the audience. This motivation stretches down to the coding style itself which uses clear descriptive names for functions and a clear syntax. Furthermore the editor is restricted to 30 lines of code, keeping all code always visible. Mercury provides the performer with an extensive library of algorithms to generate or transform numbersequences that can modulate parameters, such as melody and rhythm, over time. The environment produces sound in conjunction with visuals. Besides looking at the code, the audience is also looking at the visuals that are reactive to the sound or generated by the sound.
It is named after te planet Mercury. Mercury rules the creation and expression of our mental processes. The planet implores us to express ourselves. Mercury is about a quick wit, quick thinking. It lets us move from one thing to the next.
Quick access to playback of samples and change timing and tempo of samples or synthesizers
set tempo 89
new sample kick_909 time(1/4)
new sample hat_909 time(3/16)
Make rhythmic patterns with sequences of numbers and probabilities
list loBeat [1 0 0 1 0.5]
list hiBeat [0 1 0.2 0]
new sample tabla_lo time(1/8) play(loBeat)
new sample tabla_hi time(1/8) play(hiBeat)
Generate psuedorandom melodic content for a synthesizer in a range and set a scale
set scale minor a
set randomSeed 31415
list melody random(16 0 24)
new synth saw note(melody) time(1/16) shape(4 100)
Generate sequences algorithmically to compose complex structures and choose from an extensive library of algorithms to work with
set tempo 132
list rhythm euclid(32 13)
list melody spread(5 0 24)
list melody palindrome(melody)
list melody clone(melody 0 5 7 3)
list melody lace(melody melody)
new synth triangle time(1/16) note(melody 1) shape(1 80) play(rhythm)
Design sounds with various effects (and upload your own sounds to use)
new sample chimes time(2) speed(0.25) fx(reverb 0.3 15) fx(drive 10) fx(shift 3 0.5)
Easily give multiple instruments the same effects
new sample chimes time(2)
new sample harp_down time(3)
new sample gong_lo time(5)
set all fx(reverb 0.5 11) fx(drive 1.5) fx(filter low 2000 0.6)
Sync audio loops to the tempo of your music
set tempo 97
new loop amen time(1)
new sample kick_house time(1/4)
Control external midi devices or applications by sending midi and cc
new midi "Your Awesome Midi Device" time(1/16) note(7 1) name(mDev)
set mDev length(1/16) gain(0.8) chord(off)
set mDev cc(10 [20 50 100])
Sequence Hyrda visuals with instruments (experimental)
list hydras ['osc(10,0.1,2).out()' 'osc(20,-0.5,5).out()' 'osc(5,1,12).out()']
new sample kick_min time(1/16) play([1 0 0 1 0]) visual(hydras)
Easily control parameters in Mercury via external OSC-messages (only when running localhost)
new synth triangle fx(reverb '/synth/verb') fx(filter low '/synth/cutoff' 0.4) time(1) shape(1 'synth/length')
AND MANY MORE (TO COME...)
The playground (browser version) does not have exactly the same functionality as the original Mercury environment running in Max8. See below the differences. You may also encounter some discrepancies in syntax and in the documentation. Please report issues if you find any so they can be fixed. Items marked with a *
are only available in the browser version.
- tempo
- scale
- scalar
- volume
- lowpass / highpass
- randomSeed
- view (*)
- crossFade (*)
- list
- spread / spreadInc / fill / spreadF / spreadIncF
- binaryBeat / spacingBeat
- random / coin / dice / choose / pick / drunk / urn / shuffle / clave
- sine / cosine / sineF / cosineF
- join / duplicate / merge / repeat / lace
- merge / reverse / invert / palindrome
- expand / stretch / clone / spray / unique
- fibonacci / pisano / pell / lucas
- euclidean / hexBeat
- add / subtract / multiply / divide / modulo
- sample
- type
- time
- timediv (*)
- ratchet
- warp
- shape
- play
- gain
- speed
- reverse
- note
- tune (*)
- pan
- name
- group
- fx
- synth
- super / unison
- time
- shape
- play
- timediv (*)
- ratchet
- warp
- gain
- note
- map to scale
- pan
- name
- group
- fx
- slide
- sampler
- polySynth
- steal
- voices
- polySample
- steal
- voices
- midi
- device
- time
- length
- gain
- out
- chord
- name
- change / cc
- program / pc
- bend
- sync
- osc
- receive parameters as arguments
- send osc messages as an intrument
- fx
- degrade (chip)
- delay
- stereo feedback delay with damping
- ping pong feedback delay
- distort (softclipping distortion)
- squash (compression/overdrive)
- kink (waveshaping)
- filter
- filter modulation
- triggerFilter
- lfo
- reverb
- decaying noise convolution
- dattorro reverb algorithm
- shift (pitchshift)
- compress
- chorus / double
- visual
- use Hydra code synchronized with instrument triggers (*)
⭐️ watch and star this repo to keep up-to-date with the latest changes whenever they're made
You can code together in Mercury by using the amazing Flok live coding environment for the browser developed by Damián Silvani (a.k.a. Munshkr). Flok is a web-based P2P collaborative editor for live coding music and graphics. Similar to Etherpad, but focused on code evaluation for livecoding.
😎 No need for installing! You can start coding immediately in the browser:
https://mercury.timohoogland.com/
🤓 If you want to run the MercuryPlayground locally (for using without internet, or using the OSC-messages functionality, or when developing extra features) you can follow these steps:
Full explanation of all the possibilities in Mercury:
NB: There are still some differences between the Mercury Playground and the Max8 version. If you find any discrepancies please report an issue
Any laptop/desktop that runs a chromium based browser like Chrome or Brave.
Most of the sounds in Mercury are from freesound.org and are licensed with Creative Commons Attribution or Creative Commons 0 licenses. If not downloaded from freesound it is made sure that the license allows you to redistribute the sounds via the Mercury environment and that you can use them in your projects. All the sounds are listed below with their original source, license and credits.
You can load Hydra visuals by pasting the code in the textarea below the Editor. Removing the code will disable the visual rendering. Hydra is a Live coding visual synthesizer developed Olivia Jack.
Visual "Pixelscape" by Marianne Teixido
You can also code a small Hydra snippet inside the visual()
function. This function can be added to a specific instrument and is evaluated upon triggering of the instrument. Please see tutorial 601
on the mercury playground site.
Made something with Mercury? Please add a URL here and send a pull request! 😎
- iTypeMusic - Electronic Music Stream with Live Coding
- LXT @levoxtrip (at Solstice Stream December 2023)
- Linalab(Mercury) + Turbulente(p5Live) - Live at Algorave Lisbon
- T.mo - Liber Abaci (Mercury Coding Sessions)
- Roald van Dillewijn - Smashing Temparateness (Mercury Coding Sessions)
- Guillem Góngora Moral - Transcription #1 (Mercury Coding Sessions)
- Anne Veinberg - CodeKlavier meets Mercury (Mercury Coding Sessions)
- Nick Levantis - Wake Up
Contributions to the Mercury environment are much appreciated in whatever form they come! You can contribute in any many ways!
- Mercury was granted funding from Creative Industries Fund NL
- Mercury was granted in-kind funding from Creative Coding Utrecht
- Lina Bautista for working together on developing functionalities in Mercury to control modular synths via cv
- SEMA/MIMIC project team (Thor Magnusson, Chris Kiefer and Francisco Bernardo) for their awesome full week workshop at Sussex University in Brighton on designing a live coding language in the browser combined with machine learning
- Roald van Dillewijn for working together on osc and midi functionalities combined with his Digilog modified guitar-pedals
- Guillem Gongora Moral for using Mercury as a composition tool and sharing valuable feedback in the process
- Anne Veinberg for working with Mercury and a Mercury extensions for the CodeKlavier project
- Rafaele Maria Andrade for collaboration on networked performance between Mercury and Knurl
- Live performance image by Zuzanna Zgierska
During the development of Mercury (both the playground and the full version) I've found inspiration in many other live coding environments, practices and platforms. Some of these are:
- Hydra - Live coding visual synthesizer by Olivia Jack
- Sema - Live coding language design platform combined with Machine Learning
- MIMIC Project - a web platform for the artistic exploration of musical machine learning and machine listening.
- Tidal - Live coding of patterns
- Sonic Pi - The live coding synth for everyone
- Tone.js - Webaudio framework for programming synths and sequencers
- Nearley - Parsing toolkit
- Main Source - The GNU GPL v.3 License (c) Timo Hoogland 2019-2024
- Sound Files - Individually licensed, listed under Sounds in Mercury
- Documentation - The CC BY-SA 4.0 License (c) Timo Hoogland 2019-2024
- Examples - The CC BY-SA 4.0 License (c) Timo Hoogland 2019-2024
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.