Coding Collective Catch-up

We talk to Dr Tom Collins, Lecturer in Music Technology at the University of York about the Coding Collective, an initiative emerging and running from the Music, Science and Technology Research Cluster (MSTRC).

Why was the coding collective set up and what does it aim to do?

The coding collective was set up by the MSTRC to discuss ideas and pursue implementation of music-technological projects, and to share knowledge and code relating to existing useful packages.

We put on a range of sessions, with some intended for people with no previous experience of coding whereas others require some background knowledge.

While some sessions are about participants doing things (i.e., coding), others are presentations given by internal students or staff, or external researchers/entrepreneurs. A highlight for me was hearing from Brian Foo.

What’s in store for the collective in 2022?

More coding sessions, more talks! For International Women's Day we are planning a joint initiative with universities in Germany and New York where participants will digitise (turn into machine-readable formats) images of scores by women composers.

How can people join and is the collective open to people outside of the University?

Anyone is welcome to join and we do have a few members from outside of the University.

There are links to the MSTRC Slack channel and calendar via this link: https://tomcollinsresearch.net/recently.html#mcc

Links to recordings of previous sessions are also available via Slack.

And what about other initiatives emerging from the MSTR cluster?

Separately from the Collective, we are looking at ways to provide the fundamental skills in music and coding to students/high-school teachers/laypeople with time and interest. It would mean they could get a lot out of the Coding Collective sessions in future if they were interested in participating.