Category Archives: General

LyraVR – Our VR sequencer has finally been released on Steam!

It’s been a long haul (I guess around 18 months?), but LyraVR is finally available on Steam Early Access. Here’s the full press release:

LyraVR Beta Enables Artists to Pioneer VR Music

Steam Early Access Release Key features

  • New Instruments
  • Spatial Audio with detachable “VR ears”
  • Audio Effects
  • Audio Import/Export
  • Group Note editing actions for selected nodes (copy, delete, parameter adjustment)

TAIPEI, Taiwan – LyraVR’s radical reimagining of how we create, perform and share music is now available to anyone with an interest in music, virtual reality (VR) or cutting-edge artistic expression – and an HTC Vive.

The March 22 Steam Early Access release of LyraVR, winner of the 2015 Leap Motion 3D Jam, is now available from the LyraVR Steam page for US$9.99. This HTC Vive port adds a medley of new features, including a nine-pad drum controller, an 88-key keyboard, an audio effects library and the ability to import and display audio via an innovative system for rendering audio waveforms in virtual reality.

Users will appreciate the addition of Group Node editing actions that offer greater organizational control over their work, the option to customize the tempo and speed of each musical note, not to mention a suite of loops provided by Loopmasters. The release also features spatial audio with detachable VR “ears” that users can drag around their composition to alter the audio perspective, or keep fixed for a more controlled listening experience. Expect further releases of extra downloadable content as LyraVR grows and evolves as a platform.

Built from the ground up for VR, LyraVR is a music creation platform that offers everyone from the casual user to the most ardent musician the chance to create and enjoy incredible music sequences in full room-scale VR. Users can add unprecedented sculptural elements to their composition by hand-placing musical notes in VR and activating them via HTC Vive controllers that act as drumstick-like mallets. What’s more, they can share their original creations with collaborators, friends and fans, in the process helping to shape and advance a completely new arena of musical expression.

Other features new to this release include:

  • An autoplayer which provides an intuitive way to play musically related chords, arpeggios and phrases
  • Node based audio special effects (low-pass filter, tempo delay)
  • An innovative system for adjusting audio effects parameters in virtual reality
  • Redesigned in-world menu systems and environments, and an overhauled tools selection on the Vive wand (“Flower menu”), and hilt menu functionality
  • Audio loop recording
  • Tutorial levels, videos, and demonstration songs

The LyraVR Beta is available now from the Lyra VR Steam page for US$9.99. Please visit http://store.steampowered.com/app/572630 to find out more.

Quotes

“We see this as being like the VR version of GarageBand,” said LyraVR Co-Founder and CEO Dilun Ho. “Anyone who is into music and or VR should give this a go. The only way is to put on a headset and experience it.”

“This is a chance to totally rethink the way we make music. Early adopters will be joining us on the adventure,” said LyraVR designer and 3D artist Ian Stead.

“More than 25 years worth of experience—first with PC-based, MIDI-only sequencers, and then DAW software and soft synths as those became available—led to Lyra VR,” said programming and audio lead Jean Marais, who has a history of creating sequencers and synths for the Arduino platform.

For further information, including videos and team bios, please visit the Press Kit section at lyravr.com.

Please email hello@lyravr.com to arrange interviews with the LyraVR team.

LyraVR is a product of LyraVr, Inc., a US-registered, Taiwan-based company that is backed by the HTC Vive X accelerator program.

Turkish TB2

A grad student in electronic engineering  from Istanbul, Turkey shared these shots of his graduation project – based on the TB2.

Here’s what he wrote:

Looking at the last product that I made, it really has similarities with yours upon hardware and software design. I also really can say that I appreciate your design. I used a 16×4 LCD and I put some additional buttons. I left a gap in the upper right corner for a future sd card module. My design became actually a little bigger because I only had a chance of one layer pcb design:)

Very cool! (Click the pictures to enlarge)

20150608_211920 20150609_180634 20150610_021421 20150610_212945 20150610_213003

New hardware sneak preview

I’m not quite ready to go into details yet, but here’s what ‘s currently on the breadboard.

camera_Melissa_Hassel

This time I’ve asked my friend Old Crow to design the PCB. It’ll involve quite  a bit of SMT components, so it’ll probably not be a DIY project.

I intend to take the new machine to Indiegogo to take pre-orders for the first batch. We’re still some months off though.

New hosting – less downtime (holding thumbs)

My apologies if you found the groovesizer.com website down lately. I changed hosts to Arvixe less than two months ago – my other sites are happily hosted by Exabytes, but adding this website to my current hosting plan proved a bridge too far.

I’d read good things about Arvixe, so I thought I’d give them a try. Unfortunately, I’ve suffered outages lasting more than 5 hours at least 3 times in my short time with them. I was on a shared hosting plan with Arvixe, but my Exabytes account is also a shared one with nowhere near the same amount of downtime. Support has been helpful and polite, but I’d rather not have to use support at all.

I moved this site to a standard VPS hosting plan with Bluehost yesterday. It’s really hard to find solid unbiased reviews of web hosts, but at least Bluehost is recommended by WordPress.

I’ve been worrying that someone has set aside time to build a kit, only to find the website and building instructions unavailable. Hopefully that won’t happen now.

UPDATE:

Arvixe support has been great again – my request for cancellation was treated very politely and a refund for my pre-paid hosting was made without a struggle. I hope my hosting experience with them was the exception, not the rule.

Coming soon: Groovesizer mk1 kits

The original Groovesizer mk1 is still getting quite a bit of attention, so I’ve decided to offer it in kit form, too. I wanted to keep it simple and as close to the original as possible, but at the same time I couldn’t resist improving on some of the shortcomings of the first design. I’ve added two shift registers so that now there is an LED for each of the 16 steps – with some pins to spare broken out on an expansion header). I’ve also added a MIDI input alongside the output, so that it can be played as a standalone instrument, or synced to external devices.

Some prototype boards are being fabbed as we speak. It should be a great beginners kit with a low parts count and price. Groovesizer mk1_pcb