Why did we make TapTrax?
Music production does not have to be as hard as it looks. All those knobs and buttons for what? We built software that lets you turn any surface into a drum kit, whether you don't have years to spend on music theory or you just don't own a MIDI controller. After all, democratizing music production can only mean more musicians in the world – that's a win to me.
What's it like to use TapTrax?
Table drumming is the most intuitive way to make music, so there's no tutorial. Just turn on your camera, point it at your table, and start tapping away. We developed a proprietary algorithm to determine exactly when you tap and which drum pad to trigger based on the position of your hands, as well as tempo correction to ensure you're never off beat. Once you're satisfied, export the data as a .mid file for import into any professional music making software, including the likes of FL Studio, Logic Pro, Ableton, or even GarageBand.
How did we pull it off?
Let's run through the technicals quickly. Next.js was the framework we built TapTrax in. We used FFmpeg to handle video and audio input, Jimp to parse the video in order to locate your hand, node-wav to parse the audio in order to locate peaks to determine when the drums should activate, and Tailwind to slap the final UI/UX touches on. Some quick Photoshop resulted in our branding strategy. If you have any questions about the particulars or would just like to send some feedback our way, reach out to Mithil, me, Atharv, and Anav on LinkedIn.
Challenges, accomplishments, what we learned
Honestly, we decided not to put so much pressure on ourselves for this one, but there were still some challenges nonetheless. For starters, it took some time to figure out how to detect hands accurately on any surface and how to work around some issues with taking keyboard input. In any case, this was super fun and we had a good time, and we had the opportunity to spend a bunch of our time just messing around making music and exploring.
What's next for us?
Same as after every hackathon. We're just going to keep hitting up more. We plan to do Los Altos Hacks next, so hopefully you'll find us back here at the Aspiration Dome. Also, shameless self-promo, I'm launching an overnight hackathon just like this one – but instead of original projects in 24 hours, it's original music for music producers, and it's this April. Curious? Want to join? Want volunteer hours? Find me on LinkedIn. See you at the next one!
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.