SADLY BY YOUR SIDE from Fabrica on Vimeo.
Digital music distribution and consumption has pretty much been kept the same way for quite a while now, where consumers can choose to either stream music or download it directly onto their devices. It’s not a bad model but perhaps a model that can change in the future, and perhaps one way to go about doing that is by launching music albums not just as digital music downloads, but perhaps as an app. We’ve seen several artists attempt that in past, but “Sadly by Your Side” has got to be one of the more creative and unique ways to go about doing that.
This app was developed by interaction designer, Angelo Semeraro who wanted to explore how digital music would fit in with the technological environment, and the end result is an app that not only plays music, but will also slightly remix the music based on your surroundings. According to Semeraro, “I started thinking how an album can be expressed through an app and how mobile devices can augment the listening experience […] Mobile devices allow people to listen to music in many different places, so I thought that maybe the music can adapt to these places and give a personal listening experience.”
What the app does is that it uses your phone’s camera to scan music from an accompanying book. Once the music starts playing, wherever you point your phone at, the music will change slightly and give off a different vibe. This is accomplished through the use of blacks, blues, and reds, which corresponds to the three different layers in which the music was recorded. For example pointing at more blacks will direct the music to a particular tempo, while more reds or blues will give off a different tone.
It’s definitely one of the more unique listening experiences one can have out there, although the music had to be recorded in such a way where these little remixes, which would be unpredictable, could be allowed and not completely ruin the song. If you have a few minutes to spare, you’ll definitely want to check out the video above in which the app is demonstrated. Pretty cool, huh?
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