software – Welcome

by Esma Kurbegovic - April 13, 2021

Unique Music Tools to Spark Your Creativity

Creating music is becoming increasingly easier and more creative as technology advances. There are some amazing (most for free!) tools online that really sparked my creativity. This article lists some of my favourites, along with links, so that you too can try them out and get inspired!

Typatone

Type anything into Typatone and it will turn every letter into a beautiful sound. Switch the instrument to find what you like best. There’s tons of option. You can transform any text into ambient music by copy-pasting it into Typatone or just writing it straight inside the editor. Cool tip: check how your name sounds! There is a download button so you can save all your creations.

Google ToneTransfer

This tool is extremely appealing from a sound design perspective. It allows you to create completely nw instruments/textures out of your own recordings. The online tool has a few instruments available into which you can morph your recording. The transformation works on the principle of formant transfer. Google recommends trying how your voice sounds as a different instrument! Try using random objects or other instruments and then turning them into anything from the given list. Sometimes, the results are quite realistic, but sometimes the software produces weird textures/sounds, which can sound quite cool and unique. Try ToneTransfer here.

Left side- choose or upload a sound, right side- transform the sound

HumOn App

This is a very easy way to help make music. Simply, hum the memory into your phone microphone and the app will generate MIDI. HumOn is especially good if you want ideas on what to make. It has additional features, sounds and loops which enable you to create more than just a simple melody. This app is far from the best, but it is quite fun to use. The humming can go off key when the app records it, but it isn’t something to be too mad about. HumOn is both iOS and Android- compatible.

Audio Tool

AudioTool is an online production studio that feels like a real studio. You can play with iconic gear, like TR-909s, TR-808s and TB-303s just to name a few. Customise your setup as much as you want- all for free! Plug cables and tweak knobs manually. It’s all saved in the cloud. There’s also loads of tutorials to watch.

Interactive YouTube Instruments

There’s a whole culture of interactive videos on YouTube that I just discovered. And a lot of them are playable instruments! How does it work. The author uploads a video consisting of one shots of a chosen instruments. You can skip through timestamps by using the number pad on your keyboard. So basically, the number pad is now your MIDI keyboard. Frankly interactive YouTube videos are a very creative way of creating a cool user experience through videos. The channels Amosdoll Music and Play With Keyboard seem to be the most prominent in this field of music creation.

by Esma Kurbegovic - December 7, 2020

Turn any Sound Into an instrument With AI!

Using our voice or even any other random sound as an instrument is not really a new thing. Music producers often make synths by sampling their own voice, which is a fun approach to sound design. Moreover, beatboxers are capable of creating quite realistic drum sounds with their voice. But, have you ever wondered if it is possible to turn any sound into an actual instrument- like a trumpet, violin or such? Well, now you can!

Two teams within Google Research- Magenta and AIUX collaborated on creating Tone Transfer, which took over a year to develop. This little software allows you to transform everyday sounds into instruments, like the trumpet, violin or flute. The way the algorithm works is by transferring the formants of the selected instrument onto the sound recording that is fed into the software. The results vary, but are sometimes very accurate. However, even if they give a weird result, most of the time the newly synthesised sounds are quite cool for integration into electronic music.

The project is based on Magenta’s Differentiable Digital Signal Processing (DDSP) technology. AIUX helped make it user-friendly, so that it can be used by a wider audience, not just experienced developers. Their current online web app has a limited array of 4 instruments, with the possibility to upload your own and train the algorithm yourself. The algorithm was trained with 10-minute long samples for each of the instruments that are currently available.

There is still a long way to go and the research teams state that this is just the beginning of their plans. Tone transfer is not perfect yet, as it struggles with volume/dynamics of samples it is fed with. It also cannot superimpose attenuations of each specific instrument on the input sound, so it may not always sound realistic. The trumpet sounds the best with vocals. I presume it is because pushing out air into trumpets and while signing produce similar dynamics and volume changes.

This project is a great example of how useful machine learning can be in a multitude of situations. Software like the Tone Transfer could open up possibilities of unique live performances with generated instrument sounds that cannot be achieved with traditional instruments. Below you can watch a demonstration of how this software looks and works:

Sources:

https://www.inputmag.com/culture/google-tone-transfer-turns-every-noise-into-an-instrument

https://magenta.tensorflow.org/tone-transfer