Midisyncer - Boston Music Hack Day project

Demonstration of my hack from Boston Music Hack Day, held Nov 5-6 2011 at Microsoft NERD in Cambridge, MA. The project was an iOS app that lets you sync a drum machine or groovebox to a song on your iPhone/iPod. It uses Echo Nest song analysis data to get the beat patterns of the song you pick, then uses iOS CoreMIDI to send out a MIDI clock based on that pattern that can be synced to.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• musichackday
• music
• hack
• day
• iphone
• ios
• coremidi
• irig
• midi
• syntheticbits
• synthetic
• bits

[gideonaa]

@syntheticbits SUPER COOL! Does this work with any song you might have on your ipod or does it have to be in the echonest catalog? In other words, does echonest analyze any song you select or simply try to find that data in it's library? Nice work.

[syntheticbits]

@gideonaa thanks! the current hack day version of the app requires that the echo nest have already analyzed the song for someone else. their api/library has easy hooks to submit the song if they don't have it, or if the data they sent back didn't seem to match yours, etc. that would be one of the things i would add before releasing it.

[Psylvia69]

very nice and usable !

will you make your app available ?

[syntheticbits]

@Psylvia69 Thanks! Currently I don't have any plans to release it. Due to the way the app store works, it's hard to release fun little hacks like this. I would need to put a lot more work into making it look nicer, work better, be more reliable, etc to get it through the reviewers. You know the 80/20 rule? I'm at about 50/5 with this, and that 5% was the fun part! If I have some spare time I will try to see if I can get it polished up and releasable but I can't promise anything.

[laterveer1]

WOW! That's exactly what I need to play live with others! Does it also work with 'live' audio input or does it needs to be from a file? Are you going to bring it out in the store?

[syntheticbits]

@laterveer1 It only works with songs on your iPhone/iPod, no live audio input. It gets the beat info from Echo Nest's database, which is recorded songs. There are some hardware devices you can buy for real time audio->MIDI sync, I used to have one from Redsound. Only really worked with dance stuff and even then got lost. This app even works with acoustic songs which is cool. Also potentially would let you slave the song to an incoming MIDI tempo. Just a fun hack for now, no plans for the store.

[gideonaa]

@syntheticbits Awesome! Going to figure our how to upload files for analysis.  Keep up the good work!

[iOSMusician5]

brilliant!

[daoog]

Wavesum has an OSX app for realtime audio->MIDI clock. You guys might want to check that out at wavesum.net/waveclock-audio-to­-midi-clock.html

[Psylvia69]

@syntheticbits thx for your answer ! Well I'll wait ...