Composer David Collier releases an adaptive music app

In Your Own Time is a piece of music written for smartphone which uses the phones sensors and microphone to adapt the music to the listener. The app records sounds from around the listener and uses them to create rhythms, as well as detecting the listener’s walking speed and using it to effect the music.

The app is an experiment in creating a new musical experience, the idea being to create an experience that is somewhere between recorded and live music. It uses the smartphone’s processing and sensors to allow the music to change to the listener creating a more personal musical experience.

The app records sounds from around the listener using the phone’s microphone. Loud, transient sounds are detected and recorded as samples. These samples are sequenced as rhythms within the music creating a percussive section made from environmental sounds. As new sounds are detected they overwrite older sounds allowing the sonic quality to change depending on the environment.

Initially started as a thesis project for a Master in Music & Media Technologies in Trinity College Dublin by composer David Collier, the development team includes app developer Mick Cody and graphic designer Shane Finan.

The app is available for download from the Google Play Store from 2 April. A short video about the app is also available to view on Vimeo.

Further information: inyourowntime.net