How obsession with synthesisers and drum machines leads to creation of cool music apps: Interview with Dreampipe
We’re always on the lookout for impressive web audio projects around the web and one of the many we’ve stumbled upon was Dreampipe’s HTML5 Drum Machine. We did spend a little too much time playing with it, making sick beats in the office can be pretty intense (it's called research!). Especially since the whole team went down to watch the 808 documentary together and we were in a "drum machines are the best things in the universe" phase.
Dreampipe.io is actually the brain child of Jamie Thompson, which is a collection of in-browser applications that he built for online music production. It still amazes me to see all these wonderful browser apps that we can create with the Web Audio API. I always look forward to the Web Audio Weekly newsletter by Chris Lowis. I think Dreampipe's web apps were featured a couple of times before. It's one of the few newsletters I actually open in my emails.
We first discovered you through your HTML5 Drum Machine which was awesome and it’s probably one of our favourite UI designs too. Could you tell us what led to the inception of Dreampipe and what made you start creating interactive web apps using Web Audio API ?
It’s difficult to say.. I guess I’ve always been inherently creative with a thirst for understanding how things work on a technical level. A combination the two plus a love of electronic music led me to being creative with computers, coding and music software as well as a small obsession with synthesisers and drum machines. Eventually all of this came together and I began creating my own music apps. I’d probably be doing this stuff even if no one was watching but I’ve been very happy with how successful it has been.
DreamPipe was in part created with the idea of me making a living by being commissioned to create promotional music-themed apps. At the time of its inception this seemed like a bit of a pipe dream, hence the name.
Recently you’ve released the Orbit Sampler, how was the idea conceptualised and what was the main inspiration behind it?
The original idea behind it was to create a sort of musical infographic which would represent the planets of our solar system in orbit. However, I found that this idea had been done before, so it sat half-completed for a while. I have many half-finished projects which will mostly never be completed. It changed direction quite a few times whilst in production. Eventually I decided the I would release it on the 3rd Monday of January (aka Blue Monday) , using samples based up the New Order song. The idea is to take all of the individual sounds from one song and rearrange / remix it to make another which can be uploaded directly to Soundcloud.
I enjoyed the instrument sounds you chose for the Orbit Sampler and the default song that plays on it! Did you have a background in sound or music? Or are you a full-time web developer?
I’m currently working full time as a ‘creative’ front end dev for an interactive video startup in London. I used to make a lot of music when I was a student and had a lot more free time. The music I made was never really as good as I wanted it to be but I’m glad I did it, since it led me to what I’m doing now. If anyone is interested, my old soundcloud account is here.
Is Dreampipe working on any new web audio projects at the moment?
Yes. I’ve almost completed a new project which I’m very excited about. I’m hoping for it to be released into the web at some point in the next month. More work has gone into this one and it’s also a lot more experimental so I’m intrigued to see how it will be received. you can watch the output of an early prototype here.
Are you interested in any collaborations in the future? If yes, who would be your dream collaborator?
Either Jaronn Lanier or Oneohtrix Point Never.
When the web midi api gets standardised there will be a lot of really cool possibilities in combining it with web audio and webgl. I’d love to build something using those technologies for hardware companies like Teenage Engineering or Roli.
