SoundyThingie

SoundyThingie is an iPad application that translates drawn lines into music. Additionally to just drawing lines it lets you modify them in a variety of ways, like moving them around or connecting them. If you want to see it in action just watch the video below!

Download Video: MP4 OGG

Videos by youtube users:
  SoundyThingie-Demo, a great tutorial by WolfeWithAndE
  Review by iPadorchestra91
  Kayla presents SoundyThingie
  Drawing a wizard
  Review by the slick
  Pre-schoolers playing with SoundyThingie
  A video by Appbank

How does it work?

The application starts with an almost entirely black screen, waiting to be drawn onto by you. Each line created results in a sound that is related to the way the line was drawn.

There are only a few principles that make up that sound. Most important are:

• The vertical position of a line determines it's pitch. Lines at the top of the screen sound high, lines at the bottom sound low.
• Drawing speed determines volume. The faster you draw, the louder a line will be.

Besides that there are many buttons to press and knobs to turn which influence the sounds. You can later change a line's volume, attach other lines to it, choose from different waveforms. You can also load and save your work, modify triggers and whatnot.

There's a short interactive tutorial included with the application that explains most of the functionality and leaves some features to be discovered.

Press

Awards:

  [*] Chosen by Apple's Rewind 2010 as "Hot Trend of the Year" in the category
  [*]Generative Art & Sound; featured in 2013 in Audible Audities.
  [*] Ranked #1 music app in the app store in eight and #10 or higher in 65 countries.
  [*] Part of Best of 2010 at Disquiet
  [*] Best App Ever 2010, Honorable Mention in Most Innovative App
  [en] Part of the ZKM AppArtAward Exhibition 2013

Reviews:

  [jp] The Slick
  [jp] Soundworkshop
  [en] Wire To The Ear
  [en] Common Sense Media
  [en] Creative Review
 

Mentions:

  [en] The Fall, a Gorillaz Album for which SoundyThingie was used
  [en] The Creators Project
  [en] Mac Life
  [de] Tages-Anzeiger
  [++] Mentions on Twitter

Forum/Feedback

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Thanks + Such

This application evolved from an idea by Zach Lieberman. Even though the iPad variant is the most polished one, there do exist primitive versions for Mac+PC, called Linien Musik. If you don't have an iPad or would simply like to try it out first please go ahead, but remember that the iPad version is quite different.


Needless to say, many people were involved in the making of this app, thank you...
Zach Lieberman, for writing the very first version of this application and sharing his code so freely.
Clemens Mairhofer and especially Oriol Ferrer, for the hours of excessive testing and feedback.
My girlfriend, Be Hanke, for feedback, but also for all the patience when I was constantly nerding out about the current status of the project.
The people of faxen @ bb15, for the insanely great coffee.
Carina Stumpf and Thomas Marban for bringing an early iPad to austria and sharing it.

A huge thank you to all the people working on OpenFramworks. It is the first time I could actually enjoy C++, this project would definitely not exist without OF!


One more thing: Recently I found out about the Sonic Wire Sculptor, an iPhone application that is definitely worth checking out. While the high up on the screen results in high pitch audio principle is the same, i can assure you that everything else is very different from it (just in case you were wondering whether this is a cheap rip off).
Even more recently I have found out about a video at TED from 2004 by Golan Levin, who performs with a software he wrote that can be considered as a predecessor to SoundyThingie.


Hansi Raber, superduper.org