Loops AR

Loops AR

Loops AR

Loops AR is a project that blends music sampling, augmented reality technology and tactile interactions with a dual goal, to bring people closer to the world of music production in a fun and enjoyable way and also to provide artists with a vehicle that allows them to reach music lovers all around the world, not only with their particular albums or tracks, but with their universe of sounds, in a way that those users can make it their own and reinterpret it each in their own unique way, making therefore that body of musical work, endless.

I started this project after realizing how unknown is the world of music production, which permeates almost every piece of music being listened nowadays, to the general public, and how difficult is for people and kids in particular to get access and interest in such world. We usually send our younger ones to play piano, or guitar, etc. but little has been done to educate them about how the music they're listening everyday gets done.

At the same time I saw a lot of cool initiatives from artists around the globe in which they would publish their stems free on the internet so that people can remix and rework them, which I think it's a brilliant idea because it keeps music evolving and it makes those works have no end. Unfortunately that is almost exclusively circumscribed to music producers, which is a tragedy since everyone has a different taste, a different perception and definitely a different creative inner self even if they lack the technical knowledge.

That's why I started this. I wanted everyone to be able to take music into their hands and be able to create new content regardless of their background, age, etc.

In order to do so I've built a new intuitive touch driven interface in which people can mix samples using something that poses a very small entry barrier: big wooden discs. Once you put any of those discs into the glass a certain sample will start playing and twisting them will switch to a different sample within the disc. The system is flexible but I've found out that keeping all samples within a disc tied to a particular semantic meaning works best, for instance have one disc for synth bass sounds, and have inside different samples of that kind inside. Also you have discs that contain some effects that are applied to the whole mix.

Those interactions are the positions of the tokens are visible 1 to 1 in a screen that indicates you both the tempo, when the sample was triggered, the kind of disc that are in the glass, etc. You can think of it like a very simplified and more visual way of a DAW. In addition to that the screen will show whenever you put a new disc on the glass the some metadata about that disc, like the type, a description, place of origin, etc. This is key to fulfill the educational purpose of this project.

The users will have also the possibility to record in real time the mix they are doing and afterwards share it directly using Whatsapp, Messenger, Email and such, sharing not only the audio generated during their session, but also a .json file with the timeline of it, so that they can go to a website afterwards and visualize their mix.

So far I've described how a normal user would interact with the samples loaded in the machine, but that also raises the question of, how are the samples loaded? Well here there are two ways, right now when you start the app, I've created some sample packs to play with that are hosted in Google Cloud Storage, so it's simple, you just choose the sample pack and play with it. But there is also a mode in which a person can connect their own Google Drive account, and then create a particular folder structure. Thanks to that, the machine can reprogram itself using those samples from Google Drive and take into account all the metadata that you want to add. Obviously since this involves creating samples, this mode is only aimed to people who have knowledge of music production.

When it comes to the actual implementation of the system, I've done a big wooden box of around 50x50x40 cm with a glass top and an embedded 7inch IPS screen, driven by an Asus Tinkerboard with a camera, where people can play and experiment with the samples.

That Tinkerboard is running a custom android OS that has the app that I've developed in Unity which tracks the AR markers that are in the discs and then does all the music composition logic etc.

Obviously having only a big bulky machine is not really gonna do that much in terms of bringing music production to everyone, that's why I've also developed a version of it that runs in any kind of phone, so that the only thing you need to run the system is actually your phone, the AR tokens which could be printed on paper and a glass to put them on top of. In order to make a more appealing product for the people I've created a laser cut wooden version that fits in an A4 format, which cuts an structure to put the tokens on top of and also the tokens themselves, therefore just needing you to slide your normal phone with the downloaded app just below that little structure to play. As you can see in the videos you can even see the screen of the phone if your phone can stream video to a nearby TV.

Well, this in a nutshell is my project :) I have to say that I'm very deeply grateful to Paula and David from FabCafé Barcelona who have helped me laser cutting the stuff for the project, and in general to Fab Café cause I really like the way you empower people to create stuff and bring their ideas to reality.

Loops AR is a project that blends music sampling, augmented reality technology and tactile interactions with a dual goal, to bring people closer to the world of music production in a fun and enjoyable way and also to provide artists with a vehicle that allows them to reach music lovers all around the world, not only with their particular albums or tracks, but with their universe of sounds, in a way that those users can make it their own and reinterpret it each in their own unique way, making therefore that body of musical work, endless.

I started this project after realizing how unknown is the world of music production, which permeates almost every piece of music being listened nowadays, to the general public, and how difficult is for people and kids in particular to get access and interest in such world. We usually send our younger ones to play piano, or guitar, etc. but little has been done to educate them about how the music they're listening everyday gets done.

At the same time I saw a lot of cool initiatives from artists around the globe in which they would publish their stems free on the internet so that people can remix and rework them, which I think it's a brilliant idea because it keeps music evolving and it makes those works have no end. Unfortunately that is almost exclusively circumscribed to music producers, which is a tragedy since everyone has a different taste, a different perception and definitely a different creative inner self even if they lack the technical knowledge.

That's why I started this. I wanted everyone to be able to take music into their hands and be able to create new content regardless of their background, age, etc.

In order to do so I've built a new intuitive touch driven interface in which people can mix samples using something that poses a very small entry barrier: big wooden discs. Once you put any of those discs into the glass a certain sample will start playing and twisting them will switch to a different sample within the disc. The system is flexible but I've found out that keeping all samples within a disc tied to a particular semantic meaning works best, for instance have one disc for synth bass sounds, and have inside different samples of that kind inside. Also you have discs that contain some effects that are applied to the whole mix.

Those interactions are the positions of the tokens are visible 1 to 1 in a screen that indicates you both the tempo, when the sample was triggered, the kind of disc that are in the glass, etc. You can think of it like a very simplified and more visual way of a DAW. In addition to that the screen will show whenever you put a new disc on the glass the some metadata about that disc, like the type, a description, place of origin, etc. This is key to fulfill the educational purpose of this project.

The users will have also the possibility to record in real time the mix they are doing and afterwards share it directly using Whatsapp, Messenger, Email and such, sharing not only the audio generated during their session, but also a .json file with the timeline of it, so that they can go to a website afterwards and visualize their mix.

So far I've described how a normal user would interact with the samples loaded in the machine, but that also raises the question of, how are the samples loaded? Well here there are two ways, right now when you start the app, I've created some sample packs to play with that are hosted in Google Cloud Storage, so it's simple, you just choose the sample pack and play with it. But there is also a mode in which a person can connect their own Google Drive account, and then create a particular folder structure. Thanks to that, the machine can reprogram itself using those samples from Google Drive and take into account all the metadata that you want to add. Obviously since this involves creating samples, this mode is only aimed to people who have knowledge of music production.

When it comes to the actual implementation of the system, I've done a big wooden box of around 50x50x40 cm with a glass top and an embedded 7inch IPS screen, driven by an Asus Tinkerboard with a camera, where people can play and experiment with the samples.

That Tinkerboard is running a custom android OS that has the app that I've developed in Unity which tracks the AR markers that are in the discs and then does all the music composition logic etc.

Obviously having only a big bulky machine is not really gonna do that much in terms of bringing music production to everyone, that's why I've also developed a version of it that runs in any kind of phone, so that the only thing you need to run the system is actually your phone, the AR tokens which could be printed on paper and a glass to put them on top of. In order to make a more appealing product for the people I've created a laser cut wooden version that fits in an A4 format, which cuts an structure to put the tokens on top of and also the tokens themselves, therefore just needing you to slide your normal phone with the downloaded app just below that little structure to play. As you can see in the videos you can even see the screen of the phone if your phone can stream video to a nearby TV.

Well, this in a nutshell is my project :) I have to say that I'm very deeply grateful to Paula and David from FabCafé Barcelona who have helped me laser cutting the stuff for the project, and in general to Fab Café cause I really like the way you empower people to create stuff and bring their ideas to reality.

Ok so I will break this section into three sections, the app, the big machine and the small one

-App
Pretty simple here, I'm using Unity and C# as the main framework for the app and then I'm leveraging Google Drive and Google Cloud Storage for the systems that hold the sample packs and the system that allows you to connect to Google Drive to add your own samples.

-Big AR Deck
Uses an acrylic top of 50x40 and sides made of 18mm pine wood of around 50x50 and 50x40 for the sides and bottom. Inside goes a led strip, a voltage regulator to dim the led strip, a 5V power supply for the Asus Tinkerboard, an Asus Tinkerboard 2GB, a raspberry pi 5MP camera, cables to connect the whole thing and a 7 inch hdmi IPS touchscreen. The pine wood is cut with an axial wood cutter and the sides machined with a router bench. The panels are held together by 4x30 hidden screws in order to make the machine easily to assemble and dissasemble.

The discs are made of 3mm MDF laser cut with stickers on both sides with the AR pattern and the UI.

- AR NanoDeck
This is the small version and it uses just a laser cut A4 with the shapes of the small tray and the tokens, which are engraved in one side and has an A4 sticker on the other side. That paper adhesive sticker gets sealed when laser cut automatically.

Ok so I will break this section into three sections, the app, the big machine and the small one

-App
Pretty simple here, I'm using Unity and C# as the main framework for the app and then I'm leveraging Google Drive and Google Cloud Storage for the systems that hold the sample packs and the system that allows you to connect to Google Drive to add your own samples.

-Big AR Deck
Uses an acrylic top of 50x40 and sides made of 18mm pine wood of around 50x50 and 50x40 for the sides and bottom. Inside goes a led strip, a voltage regulator to dim the led strip, a 5V power supply for the Asus Tinkerboard, an Asus Tinkerboard 2GB, a raspberry pi 5MP camera, cables to connect the whole thing and a 7 inch hdmi IPS touchscreen. The pine wood is cut with an axial wood cutter and the sides machined with a router bench. The panels are held together by 4x30 hidden screws in order to make the machine easily to assemble and dissasemble.

The discs are made of 3mm MDF laser cut with stickers on both sides with the AR pattern and the UI.

- AR NanoDeck
This is the small version and it uses just a laser cut A4 with the shapes of the small tray and the tokens, which are engraved in one side and has an A4 sticker on the other side. That paper adhesive sticker gets sealed when laser cut automatically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7uRk237oiU

https://www.instagram.com/loopsar/

Hi! I'm Chema and I love building stuff. I studied computer engineering and game design and I've always been interested in the ways people interact with the digital world. I'm an extremely curious person and I love to be experimenting with either new technologies, music, art or anything that crosses my path really... Currently I'm a CTO in a company I founded 7 years ago but my passion always drives me to tinker with different projects on my spare time. I hope I can make the jump and dedicate myself full time towards exploring the intersection between art, technology and people :)

Barcelona (Spain)