Anyone looking for signs of life in the music industry concerning technology and innovation should take a look into Music Hack Day. Since July 2009, in various cities around the world including London, Berlin, Boston and San Francisco, the 24-hour coding marathon serves as a experimental lab for new digital music applications and technology.
Initially organised by David Haynes of music listening platform Soundcloud and developer James Darling, the event brings together web developers and hackers who have a passion for music and building software. The term “hacker” implies a illegal operative who sits in a basement and breaks into computer systems. For the purposes of this event, it’s more a case of a collaborative community using open source software to make cool new apps with the help of APIs (application programming interfaces) from companies like Last.FM, Soundcloud, Songkick and more.
Haynes along with The Echo Nest’s Matthew Ogle gave a talk at South By Southwest where they discussed how “developers are crucial to the future of music”. They then demoed some of the fascinating applications that have come out of the 12 Music Hack Days so far which confirms just how vital developers are to music, whether for future applications or just for kicks:
Invisible Instruments
Proving that technology can replace physical instruments, this hack used a Nintendo Wii controller and an iPhone to accurately recreate violin, guitar, piano and more using hand gestures and air-guitar moves.
Bragging Rights
Settles the argument once and for all between mates about who heard your favourite band first. This hack takes Last.FM user data, your chosen artist and spits out a winner.
Six Degrees
Like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon find the links between any two artists.
Earth Destroyers
Find out how earth-friendly your favourite band’s touring schedule is.
CitySounds
Uses music uploaded to Soundcloud tagged with a location to create city-based playlists.
iSteelPan
Turns an iPad into a Caribbean steelpan drum.
Find You Some Vinyl
Searches multiple stores for the best price of vinyl records online.
Stringer
A virtual instrument that uses a 3D Kinect camera and lines drawn by the user in the air to recreate a stringed musical instrument.
Bionic DJ
Don’t just be the DJ controlling the music, be the controller too. Bionic allows the DJ to control the music using gestures and yes, a 3D camera.
JSONLoops
– With the proliferation of musicians collaborating across time zones, why not allow these artists to work together in software in real-time? JSONLoops provides the answer using typical web languages so no installer is required.
Check out musichackday.org for future events.
Features
Fri, Mar 25, 2011