Music Hacks 2017
Hosted by Freetail Hackers
On April 15th, 2017, over 100 college students flocked to one building on campus and sat in front of their laptops for 12 hours. On any other day, this building would be the library, and these students would be miserably studying for class; however, today was different. Today the students entered the building with smiles on their faces. Today the students didn’t skip any meals. Today the students were all attendees of a music-themed hackathon called Music Hacks. Talk about ending the semester on a high note.
Every spring, Freetail Hackers, a student organization at UT Austin, puts together a small, themed hackathon. Using technology, participants are able to learn/use new skills and come up with solutions to problems, this year specifically in the music industry. Teams were formed, and using the individual’s skill sets, each team was able to develop a product that they could show off in the end. Participants essentially gave up an entire Saturday to turn ideas into reality, which, in my opinion, was clefinitely worth the experience.
One aspect of the event that couldn’t be beaten was the food. Completely free for the participants, meals and snacks were consistent highlights. Taco Deli and PoK-e-Jo’s did not disappoint. While some might think it’s unhealthy having fruit snacks, Chex Mix, and coffee available throughout the whole event, at least it’s not as bad as staring at a computer screen for 12 hours. Wait a second. Jokes aside, we made sure our hackers had all of the fuel they needed to work the full 12 hours. Not being hungry is one of the keys to success.
Of course, Music Hacks wouldn’t have been successful without the attendees! Freetail Hackers cares a lot about inclusivity, and we really think our attendee statistics reflect that.
- About 40% of our participants were first time hackers
- About 30% of our participants were non-CS or non-ECE
- About 23% of our participants were not Asian or not White/Caucasian
- About 27% of our participants were female
Finally, 100% of hackers had a great time. This isn’t actually based on collected data, but based on the feedback we received and the responses from attendees on the day of, you can tell people had a 4/4 time (signature).
To ensure our newer attendees also had a great hackathon experience, we hosted several workshops both before and during Music Hacks. During the week leading up to Music Hacks, we hosted workshops about web audio, the Spotify API, and succeeding at hackathons. During the actual event, we hosted workshops dealing with mobile development for Android and iOS. We also presented a super cool workshop about music visualizers using a JavaScript library called p5. It was definitely one-of-a-kind, JS.
“Is This a Cool World or What?” This was not only the phrase going through our heads as we saw the finished projects, but also one of the vinyl albums we awarded as a trophy for placing in the final competition. The final competition was a sight to behold. There’s nothing quite like seeing hackers show off the projects they worked on for so long. Here are a few examples of some projects demoed at Music Hacks:
- Virtual drum pedals that project onto the floor and mimic drum sounds
- A vocal harmonizer that harmonizes with you as you sing
- A tool that turns written literary works into catchy tunes by mapping notes to words and punctuation to rests
- An application that associates songs with color and allows for people to create playlists according to these colors
- Lots of themed music visualizers! This includes projects with doggos, longhorns, and mini-games
If this event sounded cool to you at all, keep an eye out for our future events! We host our flagship event HackTX every fall, which is a much bigger event with more attendees, more food, and more swag. And if you’re interested, Music Hacks might make a reappearance spring 2018. Be sure to follow our social media accounts if you want to keep up :)
Freetail Hackers on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freetailhackers/
Freetail Hackers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/freetailhackers
