Interactive music-making

For this blog post I browsed to the FWA (Favorite Website Awards) website to see what new Flash URLs were being highlighted and I came across two interesting sites which ask the user to "create" music by keying in or dragging and dropping symbols.

Designers are always looking for new ways to attract attention. Great visuals can do the job, but people are also auditory creatures and so are attracted to novel ways to play with sound and music. Here's where interactive music-making comes into play.

Incredibox, a French design firm (I guess it's a team of designers -- there's little information about what the website is really about), let's you string together rhythms, beats and vocal sounds to make harmonies. You do this by dragging various instrument symbols (percussion, voices, effects, etc.) onto the chests of a chorus of animated men. The men play out the particular sounds assigned them and voila, you have music.

When you click on a "what this is about" button you are told that Incredibox is an online application that "offers you to discover the musical universe of The Incredible Polo, handling a range of human beat-box sounds created by the artist." I have no idea what that means. It's bad syntax too.

I'm not sure if Incredibox is something you can buy (an application) or just a fun diversion created by three men (the contact link credits Allan Durano, Paul Malburet and Romain Delambily).

I like the Incredibox site design scheme. It's simple, black and white, no clutter. The animations are amusing and uncomplicated. I suppose with a little effort MAT 190 students can put together a similar site. It looks like it's a series of movie clips that are triggered by mouse clicks. In fact, I'm SURE MAT 190 students can put together just as good a site(!)

Another example of interactive music-making is Optus' whale song site.

Optus is an Australian business consulting firm. The company deals in broadband and mobile phone applications and appliances. On their whale song site you can make sounds with keystrokes to communicate with whales(!) Or at least you can pretend to communicate with whales.

I suppose whales are popular with the public and it doesn't hurt a company to identify with them.

The Optus site is well-designed and sophisticated. I'm not sure MAT 190 students can pull this one off.

Both of the sites mentioned above are entertaining diversions. They don't seem to be designed to sell a particular product (unless The Incredibox is something to be sold). But they are fairly cool diversions and as such serve to keep users occupied and thus there's a likelihood they will explore the website further.