Case Studies and Reflections on Agentic Software Engineering for Rapid Development of Digital Music Instruments

TL;DR

This paper investigates agentic software engineering (ASE) for digital music instrument development, demonstrating its potential to lower barriers, improve interoperability, and enhance software longevity through case studies.

Contribution

It presents practical case studies applying ASE to develop audio software, illustrating effective practices and future directions for non-programmer musician involvement.

Findings

ASE can facilitate creation of interoperable, long-lasting digital music software.

Case studies show successful re-implementation and translation of existing audio tools using ASE.

Autoethnographic insights reveal developer experiences and effective ASE practices.

Abstract

The article explores the use of agentic software engineering (ASE) in the development of innovative audio software. It begins with a review of background work that lays out the challenges of longevity, interoperability and barriers to entry in digital music instrument creation, explaining recent developments in ASE and highlighting the possibility that ASE can lower barriers to entry and facilitate creation of interoperable software with greater longevity. Following that, we present case studies wherein we used ASE technology in three distinct ways to develop audio software in the C++ language with the JUCE framework. In case study 1, we re-implement Laurie Spiegel's `Music Mouse' software as a native plugin. In case study 2, we translate Pachet's `Continuator' system from Python into a native plugin. In case study 3, we develop a new 3D user interface for an existing `tracker' sequencer using OpenGL. We describe the experiences of the human developer in the case studies via autoethnographic discussion of the prompt logs and snapshots of the software as it was developed. We identify effective practice for ASE use in this domain and suggest future steps for the work involving evaluation of the method with non-programmer musicians.