For the Aquatic Museum app, I’ll build on previous personal projects that all use the same or related audio technologies but each focus on one specific topic. Instead of rehashing the techniques, tools, and workflows I already had experience with, I wanted to use the potential of this research to further explore the specific chance and random elements that are central to adaptive audio but are also making their way into music creation apps and generative music. These random features intrigued me the most and are also the ones that were only present as side functions or sketches in my other projects.
Subsections of Inspirations
Bata Project Inspiration
Interplay in Batá percussion music
I’ll extensively use original material from two projects I co-founded which are continuously being developed in a team of four. The first one is percussiontutor.com, a library and a practice app with rhythms from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Peru, Brazil and West Africa and expanding to other cultures (e.g., Flamenco was added in 2019). A large section is dedicated to the highly complex Cuban Batá drum culture. The concept is similar to other play-along software relying on separate tracks, with the notable difference that PercussionTutor focuses only on rhythm and doesn’t rely on MIDI takes but solely on recordings by skilled musicians specialized in specific genres.
Mother & father dialogue
Batá drums in Cuba consist of three cylinder-shaped drums of different sizes: iyá, itótele, and okónkolo, also referred to as “mother,” “father,” and “child.” While performing, the iyá player uses specific patterns to call the itótele player. The expected answer also consists of a highly coded rhythmical pattern. The calls can appear at random moments during the main groove pattern, although their position within the cycle is fixed. Here is an example of the Yacota1 base rhythm.
Yacota is a 6/8 rhythm played at a slow to medium tempo. In the conversation section, the iyá and itótele converse with one another while the okónkolo keeps time. The iyá calls the itótele in two similar ways. The itótele offers one response by adding a note in front of the open tone.
This is a good example of the use of random elements in a musical situation. It is reductionist to give too much weight to this feature considering the richness and cultural value of Batá music, but it is an instance of a musical language with call-and-response codes that are taught in this way and that performers respect during play. The following example will play the calls randomly; notation serves as reference only. If you can’t hear any audio, please refer to the Why This Format section.
The Flamenco Tutor app is a collaborative project with Flamenco dancer Niño de Los Reyes and percussionist Sergio Martinez that helps dancers configure their own music pieces for their choreographies and helps musicians learn Flamenco comping and composition. The app offers recordings of multiple alternate takes in different Flamenco music styles. Features include customizable sections that can be looped, instruments that can be selected and muted, and adjustable tempo. Users will also find musical and textual notation explaining the content, as well as instructional videos and practice exercises.
Here is a looped example of a verse in the Soleá por bulería style and a screenshot of the user interface. Please note that the channel count, Channels Playing, goes from 0 to 4 because what is actually played is not only one WAV or MP3 file but a stream of 4 channels of synchronized audio tracks that can be soloed or muted in the app and on this website. The right side of the user interface shows the structure of the composition with sections that can be repeated or reshuffled by dragging. A random button shuffles the sections according to musically meaningful rules (e.g., transitions are respected):
Interakt Inspiration
Interakt: a multiplayer collaborative rhythm game
Interakt is a multiplayer immersive arcade game designed by Alex Greenwood and me. Up to 4 players have to cooperate and compete at the same time to master rhythm challenges with auditory and visual cues.
Interakt can be used as a fixed arcade installation or as a stand-alone app for iOS. It relies on the Unity game engine coupled with Ableton Link for wireless music sync and FMOD for generative music. A touch screen or any standard MIDI controller can be used as a game pad. A wireless version with iPhone pads was also designed. All input methods can be mixed and matched.
Four players have to cooperate in order to keep a central sphere from expanding and finally outgrowing the play field. The game ends when the end of a level is reached or when the sphere overtakes the players.
Random rhythmic patterns
Besides the collaborative aspect, the originality of the game lies in the generation of random rhythmic patterns. The linearity is broken during gameplay because all players have to solve their individual random rhythmic puzzles and still manage together to prevent the sphere from expanding. This demo video shows a fast-moving game session with only one player actively engaged:
Music games can broadly be categorized1 as either rhythm action games or electronic instrument games. Frequency (2001) or Rhythm Tengoku (2006) are good examples of the first category of games, the most famous being Guitar Hero. Many clones appeared along the way, with less mainstream2 artist choices:
