Reactive Music and Reconnected Reality

I have different soundtracks to everyday world, my iTunes library is filled with playlists for different moods, actions and places.

Those playslists also allow me to escape from the surrounding noise, and therefore from the actual experience of auditory reality that I exist in.

However, I've recently discovered reactive music, the type of music that is shaped by your everyday world sounds.


I have two apps on iPhone: Kids on DSP and RjDj, both based on the same engine - that is to play some pre-recorded samples, but morph and mix them with sounds recorded in real time from microphone placed in the headphones. So the software records sounds that surround you and sample them into a continuously evolving soundtrack. As a result you actually listen to your environment which makes you more connected to reality. Your medium returned you to the world that surrounds you.

It is very crude and simple, it needs to be improved, but I see a type of augmented reality here that works like boomerang, that comes back to you with some upgrade of your actual experience of the moment and the sounds of your surroundings. You don't actually cut yourself from the noise, but you use those sounds to make your music.

So I recorded my trip back from work today using different 'scenes'* from RjDj and Kids on DSP and I managed to make a small album out of it, ;-)

*'scenes' are small programs inside RjDj that control how sound is recorded and sampled with the default sets. Those 'scenes' can be programmed and published for users by anyone who make one.

Geek On Acid: Back From Work
[recorded with RjDj and Kids On DSP]