This is Love Loops^TM. It is a digital loop machine and performance tool. It plays a background beat of a heart-beat, records and layers up to 8 loops, adds vocal effects, executes granular synthesis, and provides a captivating visual experience. To use, simply open unity and press play. All effects are completely controlled by key input. R for record, S for stop, P for play. U for pitch-shifted upwards, D for pitch-shifted downwards, V for reverb, H for chorus effect, and G for granular synthesis. To record granular synthesis you must hold g down while you record. The other effects will continue manipulating your audio from when their key is pressed until you select a different key. F will bring you back to no effect/normal. You cannot control the visual amount of 'armor' shown around your heart as it is generated randomly for most key presses and is intentionally cleared on others. The continuous, uncontrollable ammount of armor and deterioration surrounding your heart is intentional and mirrors the emotions and life-experience that this project speaks to. Shout out to Celeste and Aaron and Alex and Ge for help with figuring out LiSa and Granular Synthesis and Shader-Graphs!! My project's files and build are attached on Canvas and this project was built on/is meant for Mac systems.
For this milestone, I have a functioning loop machine! Press "r" to record, "s" to stop recording, "p" to play back and start looping, and "c" to clear the recording buffer so that you can start again. Select the effects from the dropdown menu to put different vocal effects on your voice. The heart pulses with the heart-beat in the back providing structure/creative limitation for the vocal tracks (and is fun to look at :) ) Currently having trouble telling if the vocal effects stay on the selected tracks that are recorded with them on or if they just effect the output of all of the tracks as a whole. Open to any 'pot-smoking' ideas heading towards the final-final. :D
I have pivoted from my original ideas! I've been planning for a concert in the spring and something I really want to do is use a loop machine, because I got a loop machine when I was in middle school (my first peice of musical technology) and have been in love with using them since. I think this will be a really fun project and something I can't wait to use. Also follows my previous aesthetic of disembodied human anatomy (the heart -- heart BEAT). I love the aesthetic as well as the functionality of this idea. I have gotten all of the visuals there and set up how they will interact with the sound. One thing that will be added is the heart pulsating on the beat getting bigger and smaller. I have also finished the first important part of functionality, the ability to record. The core mechanic of recording and saving an audio file is now done :) Once I change the file path so that my files are getting saved to the streaming assets folder (I don't know why it's been so hard to make them show up there), then I can have the play button make all of files in streaming assets play on click at the same time. This has potential to make infinite loops, although I will be limited by how many I can play at once without clipping, especially if I want to use voice FX on some of the takes. I also love the idea of having different options for a back beat, or one option but control over the tempo. Would love any ideas going forward!
Below are my top four ideas for a final project. The first is an abstract rendering of a whole head made up of a bunch of floating spheres that outward and back together depending on pitch and swirl around and react to music with different backdrops correlating to different backing tracks. Next, a mario-like game where your voice makes your character jump and you have to hold notes to stay up and not fall into a hole/run into something. Then a mario-*cart* type game where your sound input makes the car keep going forward and key input steers left/right (or, in an ideal world, the pan of your voice from the sound source moves you left-right). Finally, a caligraphy pen that recognizes and transcribes the lyrics that you are singing in real time in different fonts that correspond to different effect patches that match the font aesthetic.
