I’ve been working on a piece of software (an audio plugin, specifically) to help me make music on my iPad.
There’s a wonderful app called Drambo which lets you create incredible music using both its own built in modules, and plugins from other developers, but it’s lacking (by choice) a “timeline”, where you can record/draw how the parameters of each sound change over time throughout the song - instead you have to control this live.
I’m into quite hypnotic/evolving electronic music and performing it live can be a bit challenging (e.g. if you make a mistake, you have to start over), and I’d love to be able to make music like this without using my laptop, so after evaluating all the software out there which can “sequence” like this and finding none of it meets my needs, I decided to build it myself as a plugin which I can integrate into Drambo.
Usually when I have these ideas for software I don’t get too far with them, but this one is actually already nearly at a point where it‘s usable, which is exciting! To keep things technically interesting, I’ve built it with a combination of C++ (with the JUCE framework) for the audio, and Flutter for the UI, which works really well in terms of fast iteration.
I’ll probably release it free/OSS when it’s ready as I don’t think there’s much money in this kind of software and it’s just built out of passion… it’s currently the thing I end up thinking about when I fall asleep etc. haha. It’s super satisfying to have got this far with a side project.
Outside of that, I was between jobs last week and spent it going on day trips from London and getting reacquainted with photography. My cameras had been gathering dust in favour of my phone, but I’d forgotten what a “zen” experience properly taking photographs can be. I had a wonderful day on Friday in a forest taking photographs of mushrooms for hours - my technique needs work but just the process of doing it was so relaxing. So I’m going to try to get back into travelling to places and doing more photography in future, it gives a nice focus to a trip.
There’s a wonderful app called Drambo which lets you create incredible music using both its own built in modules, and plugins from other developers, but it’s lacking (by choice) a “timeline”, where you can record/draw how the parameters of each sound change over time throughout the song - instead you have to control this live.
I’m into quite hypnotic/evolving electronic music and performing it live can be a bit challenging (e.g. if you make a mistake, you have to start over), and I’d love to be able to make music like this without using my laptop, so after evaluating all the software out there which can “sequence” like this and finding none of it meets my needs, I decided to build it myself as a plugin which I can integrate into Drambo.
Usually when I have these ideas for software I don’t get too far with them, but this one is actually already nearly at a point where it‘s usable, which is exciting! To keep things technically interesting, I’ve built it with a combination of C++ (with the JUCE framework) for the audio, and Flutter for the UI, which works really well in terms of fast iteration.
I’ll probably release it free/OSS when it’s ready as I don’t think there’s much money in this kind of software and it’s just built out of passion… it’s currently the thing I end up thinking about when I fall asleep etc. haha. It’s super satisfying to have got this far with a side project.
Outside of that, I was between jobs last week and spent it going on day trips from London and getting reacquainted with photography. My cameras had been gathering dust in favour of my phone, but I’d forgotten what a “zen” experience properly taking photographs can be. I had a wonderful day on Friday in a forest taking photographs of mushrooms for hours - my technique needs work but just the process of doing it was so relaxing. So I’m going to try to get back into travelling to places and doing more photography in future, it gives a nice focus to a trip.