More
See all Show me
Cell phone-based beat sequencer, a small-crowd improvisation interface. Developed with a webcam, projector, and Open Frameworks. Squares of the video are thresholded for average brightness, and when the line reaches them MIDI notes are sent to Reason.

This was mostly inspired by "I Eat Beats" vimeo.com/625464 which could only support two or three hands simultaneously -- I wanted to allow for more people.

This first performance/demo is from a local open mic. Next time I'd like to get some more musicians involved -- maybe a bassist and kit drummer improvising with the crowd...?

The source is temporarily available here: rpi.edu/~mcdonk/random/iSeeBeats.zip

Webcam/computer vision + beat sequencer seems to have a lot of fun and easy variations. Others to try: top down, tracking people; tracking faces; tracking ARtags; tracking inanimate objects or animals...

Credits

39 Likes

Tags

  • TRiSON 1 year ago
    Innovative concept, I've seen something similar to this in Seoul.
  • Kyle McDonald 1 year ago
    How strange -- I was originally planning on making this with Taeyoon Choi, a Korean artist, while at Ars Electronica. Except we were going to use camera flashes to trigger the audio. And then, just this afternoon, I discussed the idea with another Korean artist, Byeong Sam Jeon. I'll have to ask them if they've seen it before :)
  •  
  • KILLSPENCER 11 months ago
    Kyle did you make this? Where did you go to school? What is your current job? Lets talk. I'd love to find out more about this amazing discovery of yours.
  • Kyle McDonald 10 months ago
    Hey, I messaged you but never responded to your comment -- yes, I made this. I'm still a student at RPI in upstate New York.
  •  
  • Hye Yeon Nam 4 months ago
    very nice!
  •  
  • indie individuals 4 months ago
    i wanna try this but were to get started?
  • Kyle McDonald 1 month ago
    Sorry for the huge delay. This was built with Open Frameworks, so that's a good place to start: openframeworks.cc/ Then download the source and compile it on your computer.

    If you have some experience with coding, you could try rewriting it in Processing, too. Contact me if you're interested in this.
  •  
This conversation is missing your voice. Take five seconds to join Vimeo or log in.

Advertisement

4 Related collections

Groups Groups
Channels Channels
Albums Albums

Statistics

  •  
    plays
    likes
    comments
  • Total
    plays 5,077
    likes 39
    comments 11
  • Dec 8th
    plays 0
    likes 0
    comments 0
  • Dec 7th
    plays 3
    likes 0
    comments 0
  • Dec 6th
    plays 1
    likes 0
    comments 0
  • Dec 5th
    plays 1
    likes 0
    comments 0
  • Dec 4th
    plays 3
    likes 0
    comments 0
  • Dec 3rd
    plays 3
    likes 0
    comments 0
  • Dec 2nd
    plays 3
    likes 0
    comments 0
  • Dec 1st
    plays 2
    likes 0
    comments 0
Previous Week

Downloads

Please join Vimeo or log in to download the original file. It only takes a few seconds.