Robots, act human!

Robots, act human! is a very open-ended continuous atonal sequencer, where sounds can move along paths, loops, and teleport. A grid is used only as a loose guideline to create rhythmic/tonal compositions. The y-axis of the interactive area is mapped to pitch, the x-axis is mapped to time(?).

Download code + samples here!

Instructions

• Use the numbers 1-6 to select your current sample
• Click anywhere on the screen to place a robot (sample) at that spot.
• Hold space and draw a path to make a robot move along that path. The speed of your robot's movement is set by how fast you draw your path. If your path forms a loop, your robot will loop, else it will move back and forth along your path.
• Hold T and click different positions on the screen to make a robot cycle through these positions every time it is scanned.

Reflection

I think this sequencer turned out to be more of a tool than an experience. It is so open-ended that creating music with it is not very satisfying. It is extremely difficult to make something that sounds "good" with it. The fact that I mostly achieved my vision (minus the scripting with code part) makes me think that 1. the vision was somewhat flawed to begin with and 2. mimicking human variation when making music is hard! If I had a second shot at this project, I would play with the idea of making all robots move along small circles/squares/triangles, whose areas can be increased through some slider. I am very proud of my code within this project! I thought about most of the organization before starting to write, which resulted in a very smooth coding experience. The code is performant and 99% bug-free. I initially wanted to use an ECS library for this project but decided on abandoning that approach for the sake of time.

Milestone

My sequencer is inspired by J-Dilla, specifically his loose and human drumming style. I thought it'd be cool to remove the quantization that sequencers embrace so players can embrace imperfections in their patterns and maybe even experiment with polyrhythms. What if my sequencer tried to imitate the imperfections humans naturally embed into their music when they make music with their mouth and hands?

While doing research for my sequencer, i fell into some pretty deep rabbit holes pertaining to game music and sound synthesis. Tools like FamiTracker, WaveTracker, and ByteBeat inspired my 3rd design, a design that grew out of my desire to learn more about math within music and sound synthesis. My first design was inspired by polyrhythmic sequencers and artists like J-Dilla. I wanted to make a sequencer that made users fake the naturalness of MIDI pads played by humans through scripted-movement robots. My second design was inspired by more abstract sequencers like Windmill Piano, hoping to add a little more interactivity to my designs.