I’m writing music now, with code!

So earlier this week I was introduced to a competition hosted by the Amazon Future Engineer company. Even before I knew what the competition was about, or what the prizes were, I wanted to participate. After i was given a short explanation of the project, I was sent off to work on something else for the class. When I got home I looked thoroughly into the project and learned a bit about what it was. I will style this like a usual project post for consistency, but clearly it is out of the norm.

Materials:
A computer with speakers, and a browser
Zero previous code knowledge
The desire to learn new things

The project was to remix a song, Set, by an artist named Ciara. So when I logged on to the website, they have you sign up with a student account, and so I did. Then it opens a window to something called an DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation.

After looking around, I discovered on the right hand side of the screen was some very helpful documentation of the code. The documentation teaches you all about how to use the DAW, and teaches you the very basic Python programming that allows you to create your own music. After reading through most of the documentation, I quickly got the hang of the code.

Using the fitMedia function to bring audio clips into tracks at specific places, then using setEffects function to change and modify those existing clips.

After working on this for about 5 days I felt I had a basic remix of the song that, according to some of my friends, didn’t actually sound too bad. I worked for an evening and perfected it, just changing a bit of timing and a few background beats.

So, even though making music isn’t really my passion, programming is. This competition gave me a great opportunity to learn a new realm of code and enhanced my learning.

If you want to try this project yourself, go to https://www.amazonfutureengineer.com/earsketch, and make a submission by January 20th.