I’m very happy and still busy with 1; she’s beautiful indeed and a very happy kid. If you get a chance, look at the picture thread back in MPSIMS. Still, I managed to finish my first Android App! It’s called imSynt (Image Synesthesia) and allows you to transform your pics into sounds. It’s easy and (I hope) fun to use; you can even send your creations via e-mail.
Of course, there are many more features to come but still, I hope someone around here has an Android device and tries it out.
It’s a “single-sell” app, there wouldn’t be too much of a later-sell option. Even though, later on, I might be able to add on a patch which would enable the users to attach their own musical sets…
Anyhow, regarding your idea: if you (or anybody else) wants to act as a “reviewer” I’d be willing to send them a working version. They’d only have to post back their thoughts about the app.
This, of course, is an offer that:
Will be available for a limited time
Will be available if those involved actually keep their word (in significant percentages, at least)
Heh… have you ever used/seen Instagram? It reads your picture and applies “rules” to each pixel, transforming it into a new picture.
In my app, I read each pixel and:
Find out which “instruments” should play each note
Take the pixel’s color (numerical value) and turn it into a note (different numerical value)
Play the note
Some examples of my first couple of “transformations” (albeit on the PC) can be found in the SoundCloud. Caveat: the syntlets on Android are quite different from the ones you’ll find at that site.
Also: I’ve been thinking about fubbleskag’s comment and I’ll release a free version. I guess it will take me about two weeks time (I can’t work too much on it during this week, for instance)
I can conceptualize it, as I’ve converted BMP files to WAV files before. But do you get something that actually sounds like music, instead of like the modems of old when you’d pick up the receiver on the other line?
And I don’t see any reason you couldn’t just limit the number or size of images to convert in the free version.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I had in mind when I said I am going to release a “free” edition. I’ll start with a couple of free “syntlets” which people can play around with, and later on I’ll try to find a way to provide access to free images on the web.
Well, my internet connection is hosed right now (I can download but not upload more than small chunks) and I can’t get the example files you’ve got on Soundcloud to work. But I take it from your response that you are at least trying to make it sound like music, and that is freaking awesome!
I’ll definitely give this a look once my Internet will let me.
I was recently watching a video about blind people having fun with Instagram, and immediately thought of this thread. Have you considered them as a possible market?
Right now I’m working on a way to allow the user to crop the image before they play it. I also want to allow the users to switch the sound engine (and generate their own: I’m using Pure Data as a sound generator and I’ll add an interface so they can switch the way the pics are played).
I’ll have to do a lot of research before I can promote it as an app for blind people, right now I wouldn’t even know where to start, actually.
And to those who read this thread and, hopefully, install the app: any comments? Things I should change, add, remove? I’d be grateful if you send me a comment via PM or comment here or comment over there, at Google Play.
It starts in the early 1990’s. I was still in College when I learned about Mandelbrot sets. Not only did I like the idea of fractals but I started thinking a lot about them. And soon, an idea surged: why couldn’t we use fractals for sounds as well?
Soon after I was reading Douglas Adams’ “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” when I read a segment (first quarter of the book) where one of the protagonists talks about his invention: a software product that transformed business data (worksheets) into music. That gave me another idea as to where my invention could be headed.
Still, I didn’t act on it. I simply couldn’t figure out how to market it on my own and so on.
Fast forward 20 years after.
I was at work when my boss forwarded me a pretty cool link. It reminded me of my “invention”, of course and soon after I decided to try to implement some kind of musical app, using the same technology but with fractals as an input.
It was a disaster.
But soon, I though: well, Java has MIDI access built in. Why don’t I change my approach like that?
At first, I tried to use just a Mandelbrot set as input. But soon I changed my approach to using user-generated pictures. I showed the results to my wife, and my closest family and it they seemed to like it. So I charged into it: I decided to develop it for Android and see how it went.
