Audiosmusher 0.2

What is it?

Audiosmusher is a free little app for Mac OS X that uses randomness to inspire new ideas. In the same way that writers sometimes use random sentence generators to inspire them to write, Audiosmusher does the same with random chunks of audio.

It's a tool I've wanted for ages that I made as a way to teach myself Objective-C and Cocoa.

What does it do?

Give Audiosmusher a folder containing MP3 files, click start, and it will start playing random 10 second chunks from those MP3 files mixing two tracks together at the same time for added weirdness.

You can also set the number of seconds to play and whether you want to play one or two tracks at the same time.

Who is it for?

For musicians

Point Audiosmusher towards a folder containing a varied mix of music and you'll be surprised how interesting some of the results are. Sure, some of them sound awful, but there should also be enough that's interesting to inspire you.

It works especially well if you mix together fast and slow stuff. I've had some interesting results with a folder containing Radiohead, Aphex Twin, Orbital, Boards of Canada and Philip Glass.

Another thing to try might be smushing lots of drum loops and/or chord progressions of different speeds and recording the results using something like Audio Hijack Pro for sampling later.

For writers, artists and everyone else

Point Audiosmusher towards a folder containing spoken word recordings, podcasts, or interviews. Set it to play only one track and use the strange juxtapositions of ideas that results for inspiration.

Download

Audiosmusher 0.2 (.dmg)

Feedback

Love it? Hate it? Found a bug or have a feature suggestion? Let me know at . Make sure to mention Audiosmusher in the subject so I can find your message among all the spam.

Future plans (in no particular order)

• Design a purty app icon.
• Add audio file preloading. At present very large files like podcasts have a half-second or so pause between chunks while they are loading.
• Add volume control - perhaps a crossfade for when there are two tracks?
• Add setting to have tracks fade in and out when they start and stop.
• Add text fields to show what audio file is playing on which track
• Add time countdown to each track to show how much time is left for it to play
• Setting for different chunk length for each track
• Setting for different source folder for each track. EG. Have a vocals folder and a music folder mixing together.
• Add setting to allow chunks to start and stop at different times, which in addition to fading in and out will allow audio to evolve over time rather than change dramatically.
• Improve the app layout, it looks a bit ugly at the moment.
• Add keyboard commands to start/stop and skip.
• Perhaps try and find a way to make the app appear as an audio generator to music apps like Garageband and Logic for recording and adding effects? No idea how to do this or if it's possible at the moment though.

Version History

0.2 - First stable release.
0.1 - Initial prototype version.