WRONG TYPE OF TABS
Hello. Been a while. Sorry, was sleeping.
Not really though because I've been having a hard time trying to sort the thoughts out in my head. Too many tabs open.
Here's two of them anyway.
1) A Social Media Website
Another one?? Okay true but hear me out. You know all those Virtual Bands, and Virtual Choirs that have been popping up everywhere because everybody's isolated and lonely but still want to sing and make music? Like this one
Super cute! But the sheer amount of behind the scenes audio and visual engineering that had to happen to make it such a polished product must have been exhaustive.
My proposal is to programmatically automate that process and make it a fun, sharing experience with musical peers around the world. Think ULTIMATE GUITAR meets Facebook.
Features of such a website:
Individual profiles to upload audio and visual recordings to
Categorisation of recorded material to be retrieved and used by others
Assembly of virtual ensembles for practise and 'performance'
Private groups where established ensembles IRL can upload their parts so each member can still practise hearing the whole ensemble at the same time instead of imagining it their head. Perfect for classroom application as well
Some examples of how a website might be used
Tim plays the upright bass and he's looking for some virtual band members to play with. Something jazzy. He stumbles across Samantha who plays a rendition of 'Anthropology' on her erhu. Tim really enjoys her rendition and would like to jam with her. Tim realises since he lives in Johannesburg, that he will very unlikely meet another jazz erhu player locally, and unfortunately Sam lives in Hong Kong; the chance of them jamming IRL is rather slim. No matter! He practises and records himself playing to her recording and creates an online ensemble, merging the two recordings and uploading to his profile. He hashtags it #charlieparker #anthrolopogy #erhu for other interested people to discover and add to his band. 2 weeks later, he finds out that his ensemble as been expanded. Now it's him on bass, Sam on erhu, Barry on bucket drums, and Miranda you doesn't play an instrument but did film her baby crying for 3 mins and doesn't really seem to understand how to use this website.
Jenny has a wind orchestra. COVID-19 hits like the whole world. The players still want to play together. She starts a private group on the website. She videos herself conducting 'Children's March'. Each orchestra member follows her conducting and records their individual parts. Jenny collates and joins all the parts together and tada we still an orchestra. Everybody can now practise even more cos they can hear what everybody else is playing at the same time. Players start getting better, uploading revised recordings.
So it's a pipe-dream. I don't know how to make this. I've researched a lot over the past month and a half, tried learning the basic of Python. But I keep stumbling on forums on stackoverflow that overlaying 2 audio clips is not a simple task, let alone many more.
There are other issues too, more musically derived ones too, such as timing, intonation, compression in the recordings, noise, tone, needing play to a click, tempo changes, all of those things which IRL playing you don't notice because of innate human communication through subtle body language.
I really would like to do this. If not now, then in the future, but I don't know where to start. James suggested I make a blueprint for it, a complete specifications for it; am I being irrationally stubborn for needing to see a prototype for my own personal validation?
Here's a recent study on the positive effects of virtual choirs. So there's definitely reason to build something like this. But idk if I'm the one to do it sorry. James said it would make for a good PhD topic. Sounds like it might make for somebody else's.
This was long. I'll put the other idea in a different post.
Update: There is no second idea anymore! James was v helpful in confirming that the idea is okay. I've been looking into open source social networks with customisable templates such as Elgg or BuddyPress. The next step which be choosing a suitable platform, though both seem to have pros and cons. Elgg seems much more customisable, but BuddyPress seems more compatible with MAMP (the software for web development/local server environment). OK was just being stressed yday. All good now. Hopefully.