A Toronto-based mobile app maker is attempting to bring famed Canadian musician Glenn Gould’s vision to life with the release of a musical app for iOS, it announced today.
Gould lived in Toronto and was known for his studio recordings of classical composers such as Bach and Beethoven. He also imagined a collaborative music project where everyday people would assemble songs intuitively out of pre-defined components. Now Piano Invention is the app that’s trying to bring that vision to the iPad and iPhone.
Piano Invention facilitates the visual creation of music.
Users interact with graphical objects arranged in a scene using the touch screen interface to play music that sounds like a piano. Using different gestures, users can change the volume, rhythm, and pitch of the different notes being played. By tapping and swiping the objects, users can record their own music, building up a composition in layers. The recordings can be shared via the Web.
The technology behind the musical app is created by Toronto-based Moonrider. A startup that came out of Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone, and previously released a series of Art Jam apps for the iOS platform. Those apps took a similar approach to graphical interaction with music.
Pocomosso is the developer behind Piano Invention, driven by creator Shaun Elder and user experience lead Pablo Joseph.
September marks the 80th anniversary of Glenn Gould’s birth. Piano Invention will be publicly launched Sept. 24 at The Royal Conservatory, where Gould studied.