MusicBricks: Connecting Digital Creators to the Internet of Music Things by Thomas Lidy, Alexander Schindler and Michela Magas

A new Horizon 2020 Innovation Action project fosters the uptake of music technology research and acts as an accelerator for bringing creative music tech ideas to market, while providing a mesh of technological ‘bricks’ to create an ‘Internet of Music Things’.

Music is arguably the most pervasive of and little connectivity hinder the cre - bass transcription from Fraunhofer, the performing arts. It has the power to ation of larger systems that operate as a melody curve extraction and API access enlighten us, cheer us up, bring us down mesh of technological bricks con - to the freesound.org sample collection and most importantly - bring us together. necting physical and tangible hardware by Universitat Pompeu Fabra. On top of Substantial resources and personal and available music technology soft - these APIs, graphical interfaces (GUIs) energy have been invested into music ware. Yet this interoperability between such as PlaySOM and Sonarflow offer technology research in recent decades. tangible and wearable devices and the semi-automated grouping and clus - Despite the global success of European well-researched software components tering of music while other visual fron - music tech companies such as , for music analysis and processing is tends shall be easily used as well in con - Deezer, Soundcloud and last.fm, the heavily needed to make the ‘Internet of junction with the tools and APIs. The value chain from academic research to Music Things’ a reality. third category of bricks is a new genera - SMEs and large music industry corpora - tion of Tangible User Interface (TUI) tions remains fragmented, preventing The MusicBricks Project such as a wireless micro platform for successful application of the results of MusicBricks responds to these prob - motion sensing provided by IRCAM [2] innovative research. Yet, creative SMEs lems, acting as a connector between This is complemented by portable com - have been identified as the primary cata - research and industry, by identifying, puting platforms such as the Arduino, lysts for innovation, and they can benefit wrapping and making existing tools the Raspberry Pi and the Axoloti, a vastly from innovative music tech - available in easily usable formats. microcontroller specifically designed to nology research. These tools, or ‘bricks’, shall require create free-form digital audio instru - little learning, offer themselves for ments of a new kind. The Horizon 2020 Innovation Action mash-ups, and are easily adopted and ‘MusicBricks’ has been initiated with deployable by the creative SME digital The Internet of Music Things the aim of capitalizing on the current makers and content creators. The All these technological ‘bricks’ form the European leadership in successful music project will foster interoperability by foundation for a co-creational space technology companies and secure a providing state-of-the art connectors where people - musicians, hackers, dig - direct route from ICT academic research and interfaces to these technological ital makers, creative SMEs - build to the application and exploitation by building blocks. The resulting plethora entirely new applications. By intercon - SMEs and major industry players world - of components - software endpoints, necting individual nodes - the provided wide. The mission of the project is to Web APIs, physical, tangible and wear - API endpoints, network-enabled foster an exchange between the music able devices - are connected through devices, sensors, microcomputers etc. - ICT experts from academic and national and live on the Internet, realizing an these bricks communicate with each research organizations, and digital ‘Internet of Music Things’, where many other and start creating something makers and content creators from cre - different kinds of analysis, processing, bigger: a mesh of connected ‘musical ative industries SMEs. sensing, actuating or synthesis are components’ which eventually manifests taking place on different machines. as an ‘Internet of Music Things’. Despite the remarkable progress in music information research, technolo - The consortium consists of the design Events such as Hack days and Music gies provided by various projects are research and innovation lab Tech Fests fuel the creation of new often difficult to apply owing to poor Stromatolite, the Institut de Recherche mash-ups, hacks, audio tools, music communication. Research results are et Coordination Acoustique/Musique instruments combined with unthought- typically scattered among institution (IRCAM), the Music Technology of forms of application which has been Web pages and documentation is often Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, demonstrated impressively in the past neglected. Less user-friendly interfaces the Fraunhofer IDMT Institute, the by innovations such as Siftables [3], and steep learning curves hinder uptake Vienna University of Technology, and is compact devices with sensing, graph - by industry (even more so for SMEs led by Sigma Orionis. ical display, and wireless communica - and, in particular, one-person enterprises tion that can be physically manipulated, such as the typical music maker or app In the first step the project will provide recognize gestures and sense other developer). In addition, corresponding the ‘bricks’ for creative makers: soft - nearby devices while able to interac - technologies are frequently lacking ware tools and APIs, such as rhythm tively create audio; or performances proper engineering to facilitate interop - feature analysis and music similarity by such as the Brainwave Quartet in which erability with other technological com - Vienna University of Technology, key music is performed live through the col - ponents. Thus, complicated workflows and tempo detection and melody and lective brainwaves of an ensemble

ERCIM NEWS 101 April 2015 39 Special Theme: The Internet of Things & the Web of Things

Figure 1: Music market feedback both for deployment of hackers interconnecting sustainable applications and to ensure music technology to long term impact on future research create interactive directions. performances, new music interfaces or The next MusicBricks events will be instruments. Music Tech Fest Scandinavia May 29- 31, 2015 in Umeå, , and a Music Hack Day at Sónar Festival Barcelona June 17-19, 2015. Until June 2016 MusicBricks will host a set of further events and support ideas through the incubation phase throughout this period. In order to ensure sustainability, the consortium is planning to set up a Music Tech Fund in conjunction with investment company Par Equity to fur - ther support and incubate the best proto - types and help take them to market.

Links: Music Bricks Website: http://musictechfest.org/MusicBricks Music Tech Fest: http://musictechfest.org Results of previous Music Tech Fests: http://musictechfest.tumblr.com Videos from Music Tech Fests: https://www.youtube.com/user/MusicT echFest

Reference: [1] Music’s Internet of Things: wearing brain caps. Another great Through this interdisciplinarity it Heartbeats, Accelerometers... example is the “Wearable Axoloti enables a new dimension of creativity, Brainwaves? Music Human Synthesizer”, a multi- leading to entirely novel ideas and http://evolver.fm/2013/03/15/musics- user synthesizer where one user modu - applications. In past events creative internet-of-things-heartbeats- lates the sound of another through hacker ideas have led to physical prod - accelerometers-brainwaves/ touching, created with wearable elec - ucts and performances featuring new [2] Jules Françoise, Norbert Schnell, tronics, conductive surfaces on T-shirts musical innovations such as a ‘Music Riccardo Borghesi, and Frédéric and Axoloti boards. It was awarded the Hat’ which converts brainwaves and Bevilacqua.Probabilistic Models for ‘Internet of Music Things Hack Award’ head movements to music and various Designing Motion and Sound at the Music Tech Fest. effects. Relationships. In Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on New Events The most promising ideas and demon - Interfaces for Musical Expression, MusicBricks both hosts and cooperates strators generated at these events - NIME’14, , UK, 2014. with a series of events, specifically the whether a piece of software, a device, a [3] D. Merrill, J. Kalanithi and P. Music Tech Fest geared towards the cre - new musical instrument, a performance Maes. Siftables: Towards Sensor ative developer community to actively or installation - will be supported by the Network User Interfaces. In the test and utilize these tools, alongside MusicBricks Incubation Programme, Proceedings of the First International others, to generate new ideas and create which provides funding for residencies Conference on Tangible and Embedded novel applications. The Music Tech that enable creative makers to further Interaction (TEI'07). February 15-17 in Fest (Figure 1) has seen successful past develop their demonstrators to robust Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. events around the world and is a free, and market-ready prototypes and assists weekend-long event that provides an them through virtual and face-to-face Please contact: experimental and improvisational space collaboration. Feedback gathered Thomas Lidy, Alexander Schindler where ideas are showcased, performed, during idea generation and incubation Vienna University of Technology demonstrated and discussed, while will assist in the consolidation and [email protected], offering immediate assistance with the refinement of the available tools and [email protected] tools provided. It has a particular focus interfaces. By exposing the resulting on interdisciplinarity: musicians meet prototypes directly to big industry Michela Magas hackers, researchers meet industry, players and investors the project aims to Stromatolite artists and technologists come together. reach the global market and gather [email protected]

40 ERCIM NEWS 101 April 2015