LoopPedal

Inspiration

Many of us on our team are musicians. We love the power of loop pedals - they give one artist the ability to become like an orchestra. But these tools can be expensive and require compatible instruments. So we set out to create software which anyone could use to create looping music.

What it does

LoopPedal uses your computer's microphone to record sound. You decide how long your loop will be using the Loop Button. In each loop, the program records a new segment of sound and similtaneously plays back all your previous segments. After recording a few Loops, you'll hear yourself layering and creating your performance.

How I built it

We built LoopPedal using Java's built-in sound libraries and by storing .wav files. Each Loop that is recorded gets its own .wav file. Previous segments are played back by activating all the stored .wav files in a song's directory.

Challenges I ran into

We found that Java's basic sound libraries make it difficult to record and playback music. Although we got it working in the end, if I rebuilt it I would research different languages or libraries to use. Another hurdle was speaker and microphone quality. Because my computer's microphone wasn't a good quality, loops sometimes became muddy and difficult to make out.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm so proud of planning and executing this idea in our team of 4 in just 12 hours! It was a long but rewarding day, and a great bonding experience. And I'm so honored to have won HackACM's Beginner Category Award.

Built With

• java