The slam of your front door. The splash of the swans diving under the water’s surface in the Public Garden. The woosh of the Red Line whipping past you. The chortles of your co-workers by the water cooler.
While all those sounds might seem commonplace, San Francisco startup Incident would argue for their hidden musical potential. And with the launch of their fresh, free app Sequence, they now have a way to prove their point.
Incident made a splash back in 2012 when it raised $353,000 in a mere 11 hours on Kickstarter for its gTar, a music learning and performance tool – kind of like Guitar Hero for people who really want to learn how to play.
Sequence takes music learning one step further, giving you the ability to sample and mix beats from the world around you using an intuitive pattern grid and then share it with your friends.
“You don’t have to know how to compose. The hope is that people will do more with sampling and make music with all the percussion around them every single day,” explained the company’s director of brand development and founding team member Josh Stansfield.
Though the company is based on the West Coast, Stansfield is a native of Topsfield, Mass. Stansfield grew up in a musical household, with both parents playing instruments (his dad was a Berklee School of Music alum, and even taught art at Ipswich High). “But I never really had the patience to stick with something," Stansfield said. "I would try everything and quit almost immediately."
It was only when he realized that he could start mixing pre-existing songs and beats on his computer – “not necessarily composing, but manipulating sounds,” as Stansfield puts it – that he felt like he was getting somewhere. Explained Stansfield:
I didn’t have confidence to commit to practicing until I got immediate gratification. Using something like Sequence makes you realize that practice will result in something. … People, when they first pick up and start learning an instrument, are not getting to where they want to go. They don’t see the full circle, just the unsatisfactory results and frustration.
Sequence, then, gives people starting out at a very basic level a taste of the end product and that “I made this from scratch” moment.
The app itself was inspired by a summer project from a past intern of Tufts University, who programmed the gTar to create drum sounds. Six months ago, the Incident team returned to the idea and started to dig in, spinning a mobile version.
Sequence features the sounds of 18 unique instruments, from electronic to vintage synthesizers to woodwinds to acoustic guitar. The app can support five tracks simultaneously for mixing and matching, and allows users to save songs and share them via Soundcloud over text and email with friends.
Added Stansfield:
We’re not building an instrument for the guitar this time, but an instrument on its own platform, as a creative medium.
Watch Sequence in action in the startup's video below:
