I love Sonic Pi, but I'd prefer using VScode over the default editor. An extension is currently in the works. Here are some relevant links:

• VS Code extension
• llloret/sonic-pi-vscode-editor

Until then, here's a quick and simple way to run/play Sonic Pi music from VScode directly.

1. Install sonic-pi-cli 👨‍💻

Sonic-pi-cli can be installed by running:

gem install sonic-pi-cli

Check out their GitHub repository for more details.

gem install sonic-pi-cli

sonic_pi play 50
sonic_pi sample :loop_breakbeat, rate: 0.5
sonic_pi stop

echo 'sample :loop_amen' | sonic_pi
cat music.rb | sonic_pi

$ irb

irb(main):001:0> require 'sonic_pi'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> SonicPi.new.run('play [50, 55, 60]')
=> 36

Once it's been installed, make sure it's working properly. Keep the Sonic Pi app running, then run the following command in your terminal:

sonic_pi play 50

The Sonic Pi app needs to be running for sonic-pi-cli to work.

2. Using sonic-pi-cli to play a file 🎵

Say for example, you have your Sonic Pi code in music.rb. Run

cat music.rb | sonic_pi

to play the music.

If you don't understand what this command does, you can read more here. In short, the pipe (|) passes the output of a command to another command.

To stop the music playing, run

sonic_pi stop

3. Configuring keyboard shortcuts ⌨️

Running cat music.rb | sonic_pi and sonic_pi stop every time is a little annoying. Luckily, VScode makes it easier to defne custom tasks and keyindings.

Tasks

To open tasks.json, use the keyboard shortcut cmd+shift+P. Type >Tasks: Open user tasks, and you should see a JSON file that looks like this:

{
  // See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=733558
  // for the documentation about the tasks.json format
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
  ]
}

We need to add 2 tasks:

1. To start playing the current file with Sonic Pi: cat <current file> | sonic_pi
2. To stop playing: sonic_pi stop.

We also have to give them unique labels. I'm going to use sp-run and sp-stop.

Now edit tasks.json:

{
  // See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=733558
  // for the documentation about the tasks.json format
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    // PLAY MUSIC
    {
      "label": "sp-run",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "cat ${file} | sonic_pi"
    },

    // STOP PLAYING
    {
      "label": "sp-stop",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "sonic_pi stop"
    }
  ]
}

As you can see, the task sp-run runs the shell command cat ${file} | sonic_pi, and sp-stop runs the command sonic_pi stop.

Keybindings

Now we need to add keybindings to these tasks.

To open keybindings.json, use the keyboard shortcut cmd+K cmd+s. Click the button at the top right to open it in the JSON format. It should like similar to this:

// Place your key bindings in this file to override the defaults
[
  // ..
  // all of your keybindings
  // ...
]

To bind a keyboard shortcut to a task, we have to set its command to workbench.action.tasks.runTask. We also want to limit this keyboard shortcut to ruby (.rb) files.

Edit keybindings.json:

// Place your key bindings in this file to override the defaults
[
  // ..
  // all your other keybindings
  // ...

  // for sonic pi
  {
    "key": "ctrl+alt+s",
    "command": "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
    "args": "sp-run",
    "when": "editorLangId == ruby" // limit these keybindings to work in ruby files
  },
  {
    "key": "ctrl+alt+d",
    "command": "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
    "args": "sp-stop",
    "when": "editorLangId == ruby"
  }
]

I've added ctrl+alt S to play the file, and ctrl+alt D to stop. Feel free to change them.

To make sure this works, create a file with the extension .rb, and some code:

live_loop :main do
  play :E4
  sleep 1
end

Start the Sonic Pi app,

Now use the keyboard shortcut you defined for sp-run, (ctrl+alt S in this example), and you should here the music playing!

Make a change. For example:

live_loop :main do
  play :C4  # <-- change
  sleep 1
end

Use the keyboard shortcut (ctrl+alt S) to play the music again. Great! No need to stop playing every time you make a change!

Finally, top stop the music playback, use the keyboard shortcut for sp-stop (ctrl+alt D in this example)

Logs 📝

Unfortunately, logs cannot be shown in VScode (yet). But you can still view them in the Sonic Pi app.

Files 📁

If you would like to refer to any files changed in this tutorial, check out the GitHub gist.

References 📖

• Key Bindings for Visual Studio Code
• r/vscode: Can I get keyboard shortcuts to only work on files of a specific extension?