Tag: music games

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This procedurally generated game captures the lurid rituals of a concert

Everyone shuffles in, somehow looking both non-committal and excited. The space is tight-knight, vaguely dingy, and hot from all the breaths and bodies. People are talking, but not real talk—at most, small talk, to diffuse the tension of waiting. Then, the lights go black and everything stops for one full second. Whether the lights come back on only to reveal a pouty mouthed Justin Bieber, or the pasty faces of Neutral Milk Hotel, the ritual is just the same. Like-minded (sometimes even like-looking) people huddle around a stage, thrashing their limbs in synchronization to a rhythm they know by heart. No…
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Think you’re good at rhythm games? Try mastering Steve Reich’s Clapping Music then

Welcome to life after Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, where every music game feels incomplete without J.K. Simmons’ Fletcher yelling, “are you rushing or are you dragging?” While Whiplash does not yet exist in game form, at least there’s Clapping Music, which may induce similar levels of angst in players.  The game, which was made by Touchpress, London Sinfonietta, and Queen Mary University of London, challenges players to learn Steve Reich’s 1972 composition, “Clapping Music.” This is easier said than done. “Clapping Music,” like much of Reich’s work, uses a technique called phasing in which multiple players play the same sequence at…
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Interactive documentary has you use the world as a musical instrument

The world is an infinite musical instrument. This is the prevailing idea across the interactive documentary Soundhunters. And it doesn’t mean in the way as I understood it in my college days, drumming out beats onto desk corners with my fingers; it’s less deliberate than that. The idea is to listen intently to the everyday sounds around you, record them, and then bring them together to create a musical tapestry from natural noise. “Today, every sound can be recorded, hijacked, manipulated and reinvented into an original musical creation. That is how a soundhunter works,” reads the project’s documentation. To demonstrate this,…
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Harmonix’s virtual reality game is a music "spatializer"

Harmonix reckons it’s time for the music visualizer to go about a big change. That’s probably about right. For an electronic art that’s almost as old as videogames it’s a wonder how it’s managed to remain so close to its roots in abstract shape-making. Did you know that the first commercial electronic music visualizer was created by the same guy who developed the home version of Pong, way back in 1976? The two mediums have always been intertwined. And so, as videogames make what seems to be a firm leap into virtual reality, Harmonix wants to bring music visualization into this…
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Rioux’s latest EP realized as an irridescent glitch world

Getting inside a musician’s mind is relatively easy work these days. Whereas the 20th century was mostly restricted to whatever questions Rolling Stone proffered their subjects, now we have the miracle of multimedia practically opening up their skulls as if a hungry spoon scalping a ripe kiwi fruit. Brooklyn-based artist Rioux is fond of subjecting himself to this cannibalistic act, and he has done so once more in promotion of his new Evolver EP, teaming up with Vinyl Williams to pour his brainscape into a virtual world for us to consume. It evokes a delightful mysticism  You can download this digital environment named…
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Recreate Jamiroquai’s "Virtual Insanity" music video in this game

I remember being eight-years-old and having a playground debate as to how Jamiroquai’s music video to the song “Virtual Insanity” was made. We were kids, so obviously one of the suggestions was that it was magic. Another said it was computer graphics. But the most plausible was that the floors were moving. When bringing this suggestion to my dad even he agreed that it was probably the answer. It wasn’t. It’s the dance of a cyborg.  If you’re not familiar with the 1996 pop-soul record or its video, you should remedy that right now. Jay Kay, the band’s singer, seems…