The latest music video by Erupt and director Will Cyr, Art of Beat Making, presents a futuristic vision of beatmaking that combines multitouch tabletop computing with Minority Report – style gear interfaces.
Yes, it’s hip hop, so we know that half our readers probably just threw up in their mouths a little. But what about Erupt and Cyr’s vision for the future of beatmaking, and for electronic music production, in general?
It’s futuristic – but not pure fantasy.
The multitouch tabletop computer takes off from the Microsoft Surface Computing user interface and current tablet devices. And the “Minority Report” type of user interaction is something that is currently being worked on by Apple and others.
What do you think of this vision for the future of electronic music making? Would you want to make music in a studio like this?
If this is the future of beat making and electronic music then I am out of the game. Not only does his interface look retarded and super digital but producing with Beats by Dre is a VERY bad idea. Also if there is a cat in the video… You should expect some modular synth action. Just sayin.
What is it with cats always wanting to hide out in modular synths like they’re $4,000 kitty playhouses?
Looks a lot like Garageband actually. Also, I’ll take a keyboard with weighted keys, please.
That keyboard looked like it would be terrible to play – might work for sequencing notes, though.
I love a great keyboard, too, but it’s worth noting that guys like Buchla and Moog spent a lot of time working on non-traditional controllers, because they recognized the limitations of traditional keyboards and how traditional keyboards also force certain limitations on the music you can make.
I think you could make some sweet modular stuff! Imagine a Zebra 2 in this system…
I think it’s probably the future of computing, so yeah…adapt or perish.
And I like hip-hop, but that song is terrible.
seriously? a whole bunch of annoying b.s.. if this is the future then the world is gonna end any minute and we’re already dead anyway. horribly horrific.
Im surprised there’s not more support for this minority report, after all, isn’t the ipad essentially version 0.5 of this? and isn’t the ipad music-god? Like the ipad, it would be excellent for unique interfacing, sequencing, and generally expanding what we can do with music, but suck at things like having a weighted keyboard.
There’s really this much hate for something that looks like piloting a future-spaceship? Sometimes the pedantry of synthtopia readers distresses me. Your 303 isn’t king anymore, deal with it.
*minority-report style interface
*ipad the god of music
I like to think my points are salient, but poor grammar doesn’t help.
Does this guy have some sort of impairment in the linguistic dimension?
Sweet video. The part where he brings in the chorus and cleans it up is wickedly done.
that beat really really sucks
The one and only impressive part of that video is how the light table can genetically filter out input from feline paws. Crap song, crap UI concept.
Any time I see someone spouting the “minority report UI” it becomes clear how little those people actually know about human user interfaces. Waving your hands around some light emissions is far, far less effective than anything we have today. Lets see that guy actually play an instrument instead of triggering loops and banging out a basic triad. No touch feedback, no pressure sensitivity, no velocity? We haven’t even hit the basics and this “amazing” UI is already lacking. He waves a hand and “gets reverb”? Really? Is anyone fooled by that? The best you could hope for is a random selection from a list of presets that someone created using a mouse. Oh, but that’s right, this guy is just triggering samples anyway, so that’s all he expects. If we could all just tap or wave, how could we ever hope to produce anything unique?
Look up the guys who created the Minority Report UI, and then follow their nearly 20 year failure story to EVER find a functional use for that technology. The road ends with a recent TED talk where the host asks him at the end of the presentation, “What’s the application for this”? After stuttering a bit, he replies, “we are still looking for that”.
Don’t be amazed by the tech, be amazed by what someone is doing with the tech. If you can’t tell the difference without looking, it was all BS.
my cat’s breath smells like cat food.
I actually like the direction this COULD take. People are hard to sell new ideas to though. Check out MOST of the reaction on macrumors when the very first iPod was introduced. It changed the world. Without it, there’d be no iPhone, no iPad, and no copycats from around the world. Love it or hate it, it had an impact:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=500
Wow, you guys are really harsh.
I am not qualified to comment on hiphop, so ignoring the music, I thought the interface looked more plausible than the BeatThang. It reminded me of Tabletop for iOS, which might be a smart way to go for this sort of UI. It might not be efficient or even natural, but duplicating familiar deviced on a virtual interface is easy to get into.
I like Adam’s point that it looks like Garageband. When we get up to these SciFi UIs, Garageband will be retro and Synthtopians will be telling each other that you need to run an old Macbook for that classic analog sound. For that generation, something like this will immediately inspire them to make music, which is all I’d ever ask of any new tech. Think I’m so far off? Tell that to the kid who thinks his EMX is the pinnacle of analog synthesis. “Hey, it has tubes!”
You all know this is just a video right? Lol I mean it will take more years to get to this point,and I’m sure it will..like somebody said you either adapt or die..
FYI, FOr those interested in actually discovering more about this artist, his name is Erup, not Erupt.
” multitouch tabletop computing”
HUH?
It was virtual reality, not ipad on steroids, what’s with these ipad delusional owners?
Just get over it already, ipad will only be a toy and a scratch pad, until the year 2020.
Actually FYI, shows how much peopl on this page know about hiphop and interfaces for that matter. Very little. The editor for this did a great job i find ! VFX was much better than expected.
@dSyrup FYI to you. I did my research dude, You should too. it’s actually Erupt. Not Erup lol. http://www.eruptmusic.com , just downloaded his mixtape, its got some pretty good tunes. Heard he’s from Toronto. Pretty awesome for fucking canadian lol.
I think the thing that bugged me the most was that he was sitting. I mean if this is a future where don’t have to exercise to be healthy, I’d much rather be chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool.
I’m willing to give the video the benefit of the doubt that bio-electic feedback was providing tactile feedback.