Music Remixers: two examples, one winner
This is the second article about building a music remixer. If you have not read the first, please do, otherwise the pizza metaphor will mess with your brain.
In the first article I described the most common mistakes when creating a music remix application. The big question is, do we live as we learn? We have done a number of remix related projects through the years but here are my two favorites, let’s see how they fare!!
The Rick Astley Remixer
The Rick Astley Remixer allows you to remix Rick Astley’s iconic Never Gonna Give You Up. Erik Brattlöf, our Interactive Director at the time, came up with the idea. Here’s Erik to give you the story:
“The Rick Astley Remixer was born from a few different events that just happened to align perfectly:
- I had just been given an Arduino that I wanted to use for some kind of music related project.
- Someone shared a video of a very weird physical thingie that they used to control different parameters in Ableton.
- I got a call from my old university asking if I wanted to lead a bunch of students through a project involving music and/or sound with an interactive twist.
Said and done. The first idea I came up with was very ambitious and artsy. I headed to the university to present this “simple” idea I’d been pondering for weeks. They all reacted with silence and that facial expression someone has the first time they get quantum computing explained.
Back at home I figured we needed something more concrete — the idea of a physical interactive music remixer was born. The user should be able to remix a song with physical buttons that turns tracks on and off. The song should exist in different versions and the user should be able to combine the elements to create their own personal remix. I wanted the original song to be something that makes everyone happy and (logically) ended up with Never Gonna Give You Up.
The students were split up in seven groups, each given the task to create a cover of the song in a specific musical style. The versions had to have the same tempo, key and musical form so that all versions would work with eachother. The instruments in each version was split up into five groups based on musical function. This made it possible to create a matrix that covered all ways the instruments could be combined.
The number of combinations are almost endless, a favorite is latin drums mixed with black metal guitars and rap. To create it even more variation each version was made in three intesity levels (low, normal, high), and and also a “sad” version (minor instead of major).”
Playing with the box has been the privilege of the few so we did a web version, desktop and tablet, that you can try here:
Robyn Interactive Beat Machine
This was a collaborative project with Mary Fagot at Blip Boutique and a team of highly talented people. For the full story and a complete credit list, please read “the making of” story here.
Robyn Interactive Beat Machine is based on one of Robyn’s music tracks, “We Dance To The Beat”. The title gave the basic idea:
We Dance To The Beat Of [insert username here]
the Beat is the creation of the user.
A Beat should not only be musical but visual, i.e. a music/video remixer. The original track was built up by 14 different instruments and we sourced some 100+ quirky GIF style videos. Each video was assigned to the instrument that was the best fit.
The remixing was not just turning tracks/videos on and off, the user could actually interact and change both the music and the video in realtime. By clicking the video for the instrument the user could “program” both the video and the music and really make it their own. Clicking on the video could e.g. change playback rate or direction, create loops. The music track could be filtered, get a delay, increase intensity etc. In the end there were over 200 distinct behaviors defined, making the number of variations truly infinite.
We wanted the user to be able to create any combination of instruments while making sure that it still sounded great. We created an infinite grid of all the videos where the same combination of videos never repeated. The selection of instruments was done by moving the grid, only the four videos in the center of the screen were playing.
The user created their Beat by moving the grid until they found a combination that they liked and then interacted with the videos to create their personal performance. As the final step they could share their Beat in social channels, and the Beat was placed in a Stream of all user generated Beats. After two weeks the total length of the stream was over 2 days and nights.
Robyn Interactive Beat Machine is ancient (Flash) and no longer online. Here is a screen capture
and the same capture with commentary
Verdict
So how did these projects measure up to my 6 pizza rules? Let’s see:
#1: Everything sounds the same!!
- Astley: no way that blip and jesus sound the same. 5/5
- Robyn: it is a pretty minimalistic track but the variation is pretty big. And then there is the visuals. 4/5
#2: That looks complicated…
- Astley: many options, many buttons, but I think it is pretty clear what you should do. 4/5
- Robyn: this is tricky, the UI is not complicated but it is not obvious what you should do. On the other hand, if you don’t think and just do, then you will figure it out pretty quick. We should have done a short instruction in the beginning. 3/5
#3: Oh no, it’s The Loop Trap!
- Astley: we are safe here, no loops, a whole song. 5/5
- Robyn: the original is track based on loops so I will not hold that against the remixer. And since the user can program both music and video the loopyness is even more reduced. 4/5
#4: Pizza Overload!
- Astley: no overload since the versions are split into 5 elements. 5/5
- Robyn: same thing here, only four elements play at the same time. 5/5
5#: nothing beats a serious case of writer’s block
- Astley: the instructions to the students were to create a real cover so no risk for interactive writer’s block. 5/5
- Robyn: pre existing track! 5/5
#6: That doesn’t sound like goat cheese!
- Astley: the connection between user interaction and result is as clear as it can get. 5/5
- Robyn: more subtle connection but if you get how the UI works then…. 4/5
And the winner is…
- Astley: 29/30
- Robyn: 25/30
Ok, I admit, I am biased and I made up the rules, cannot get more subjective than that. But I still think that the Pizza rules is a good checklist for any remix application.
If you haven’t already please read the first remixer article. I will not ask a third time 😜!
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