Sonic Pi 5 RC First Impressions with What Is Love

These are my first impressions of the new Sonic Pi 5 release candidate from the perspective of someone who loves live coding. I’ll cover the new interface, documentation workflow, editor visualizations, audio features, and some of the new musical material. At the end, I’ll also share a small gift that some people have asked me for so they can experiment with it.

I also tested my two Ruby gems, figurate_numbers and modular_forms, and they continue to work correctly in Sonic Pi 5.

First look at the new interface

The interface redesign also made a great impression on me. It feels more modern, cleaner, and more enjoyable to work with.

We finally have theme customization, including hue changes, transparency, monochrome, and color inversion, providing a more personalized experience. The available themes are:

• Light
• Dark
• High Contrast
• Mild Dark (really nice on my eyes)
• Phosphor (I selected this one for the images below and guessed the percentage of hue adjustment I used)
• Signal

Continuing with the interface improvements, what I found especially interesting is how the new control sliders support understanding and experimentation.

Beyond explaining ADSR envelopes, these controls make the possible range of each parameter much clearer. Instead of guessing valid values or discovering them through trial and error, the visual interface immediately shows the available possibilities and encourages exploration.

For example, a parameter such as phase becomes more intuitive when its range is visually represented:

This kind of feedback creates a natural connection between programming and mathematical concepts such as intervals and functions.

Likewise, the visual representation of the cutoff parameter through bars (visible in the image above) provides an immediate view of how filtering changes the frequency range, particularly the attenuation of higher frequencies, without relying only on numerical values.

Editor

I noticed the new dynamic event visualization features added to the editor. Now, every triggered sound event can generate visual feedback through three customizable options, each with adjustable brightness:

• Flash code on sound trigger
• Flash gutter on sound trigger
• Show live loop scopes

The documentation is a live learning tool

The documentation available through the help panel using the F1 key is impressive. It creates a natural bridge for people coming from music production environments, DAWs, and hardware synthesizers.

The combination of code, parameter controls, knobs, and visual controllers connects familiar musical workflows with live coding, making experimentation between sound design and programming much more fluid.

For example, a mod_saw (modulated saw wave) synth allows you to explore parameters such as mod_range directly with the knob, preview the sound using the virtual keyboard, and then transfer the result into your live coding session. This workflow creates a natural path from experimentation to code.

Interface observations

While exploring this release candidate, I noticed what might be a small interface detail related to zoom scaling. When the documentation zoom level is increased, some interface elements do not seem to adapt completely to the larger size. Some labels appear partially hidden or overlap, and the full names of certain controls are not always visible.

It is a minor detail, but perhaps it could be improved with better spacing, responsive resizing, or a horizontal scroll option. I also noticed that the text labels inside some knobs do not appear to scale with the zoom level.

Additionally, it would be great if the lists inside Tutorial, Examples, Synths, Fx, Samples, and Lang could also support text scaling for users who need better visual accessibility.

This is only a design observation from my experience using the interface, but I think these small details could make Sonic Pi even more comfortable for a wider range of users.

Music material: new scales and samples

Using puts scale_names, I found some new scales available in this version:

(ring
  :acoustic,
  :altered,
  :byzantine,
  :lydian_dominant,
  :phrygian_dominant
)

Likewise, with puts chord_names, I found these new chord options:

(ring
  "7+9",
  "9-5",
  "mM7",
  "maj13",
  "min7",
  "minor_major7",
  "mmaj7"
)

Audio

For me, one of the most impressive things is the new SuperSonic audio backend. I haven’t explored the full codebase yet, but the ideas behind it are fascinating. The new audio architecture gives us a much more engineering-oriented view of what is happening internally. The panel now shows the live audio node tree:

• ENGINE
• OSC
• CLOCK
• DSP
• LINK AUDIO
• SCSYNTH
• BUFFERS
• ERRORS

We can also observe Groups, Synths, FX, and Samples interacting in real time within this graph structure. This makes it much easier to trace the flow of audio and see how the different components are connected during a performance.

And what you are seeing in the image above is exactly What Is Love. At the beginning of the track, the sample counter is still at zero. Now, as promised, here comes the gift.

Code and performance

For this version, I revisited my adaptation of “What Is Love” (Haddaway), originally created several years ago (2021).

Use the copy button to quickly try the code in your own Sonic Pi session.

##| What Is Love (HADDAWAY) for Sonic Pi

use_bpm 126

##| ARP
with_fx :reverb, mix: 0.5, room: 0.85 do
  with_fx :distortion, distort: 0.4 do
    live_loop :intro_melody do
      use_random_seed dice(4)
      a = (ring :Bb4, :A4, :Bb4, :G4)
      b = (ring :Bb4, :A4, :Bb4, :F4)
      c = (ring :A4, :G4, :A4, :F4)
      synth :chiplead, note: (knit a.tick, 8, b.look, 8, c.look, 16).look,
        release: rrand(0.15, 0.25), sustain: 0.1, attack: 0,
        decay: 0, amp: 0.4
      sleep 0.5
    end
  end
end

##|HARMONY
with_fx :reverb, mix: 0.5, room: 0.9 do
  live_loop :chords, delay: 16, sync: :intro_melody do
    with_fx :slicer, phase: 0.75 do
      use_synth :dsaw
      chordas = [(ring :G4,:BB4,:D4), (ring :F4,:BB4,:D4),
                 (ring :F4,:A4,:D4), (ring :F4,:A4,:C4)].tick
      play chordas, amp: 0.75, sustain: 3, attack: 0.25,  release: 0.25
      sleep 4
    end
  end
end

##|SPLASH
with_fx :panslicer, invert_wave: 1, phase: 1.0/4 do
  live_loop :splash,  delay: 32 * 1 do
    use_random_seed 43
    sample :ambi_lunar_land, release: 0.25, amp: rrand(0.2,0.3)*1
    sleep 0.5
  end
end

##| BEEPFUSION
with_fx :reverb, mix: 0.3, room: 0.7 do
  with_fx :echo, mix: 1, phase: 0.5 do
    live_loop :harp_music, delay: 48*1 do
      use_random_seed 123
      8.times do
        tick
        with_fx :panslicer, phase: 0.75, invert_wave: [1,0].choose do
          p = (ring :G4, :Bb4, :A4, :F4)
          synth :dtri, note: p.choose, release: 0.2
          sleep (ring 0.25,0.75,0.5).look
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

##| BASS GROOVE
with_fx :distortion, distort: 0.5 do
  live_loop :bassus_impro,  delay: 64 * 1 do
    t = (ring :G3, :G3, :G3, :G3, :F3, :Bb3,
         :Bb3,  :Bb3, :C4,  :Db4, :D3,  :D3, :D3,
         :D3, :D3, :F3,  :F3,  :F3,   :D3,  :F3) - 12
    synth :fm, note: t.tick, release: 0.45,
      sustain: 0.15, amp: 1.2
    sleep (ring 1,0.75,0.75,1, 0.5).look
  end
end

##| TEK DRUM
live_loop :eternal, delay: (64+16)*1 do
  sample :bd_haus, amp: 2.5, cutoff: 93, rate: 0.97, compress:  1
  sleep 1
end

##| DRUMS
live_loop :bom, delay: (64 + 32)*1 do
  sample :bd_sone, amp: 1, compress: 1, rate: 1.7
  sleep 1
  with_fx :reverb, mix: 0.2, room: 0.14 do
    sample :sn_dolf,  amp: [1,1].tick
    sleep 1
  end
end

##| SING THE MELODY
with_fx :reverb, room: 0.5, mix: 0.8 do
  with_fx :ping_pong, mix: rrand(0.55,0.6), amp: 0.5, phase: 0.25 do
    with_fx :echo, phase: 0.25, mix: 0.5, pre_mix: 1, max_phase: 1, decay: 1.5 do
      with_fx :distortion, mix: 0.2, distort: 0.8 do
        live_loop :principal_melody, delay: (64 + 64)*1 do
          melody = [:r, :D4, :Eb4, :D4, :F4, :D4,
                    :D4, :F4, :D4, :D4, :C4, :D4, :F4, :G4]
          sleep_m = [2,0.5,0.5,0.5,1,2.5,0.5,1,2.5,0.5,3,0.5,0.5,0.5].ring
          synth :supersaw, note: melody.tick, amp: 0.6, release: 0.35, sustain: 0.2
          sleep sleep_m.look
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Closing thoughts

My thanks to Sam Aaron and the entire Sonic Pi community for continuing to evolve this amazing creative environment.