- Title: Music mixing in virtual reality
- Date: 19th August 2019
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) VOLTA CREATOR, ALEX KANE, SAYING: "If you wanted to take a guitar track and record this motion of it going from here down to here and then up to here, that might take you a couple of minutes to make it sound how you want it to sound. Whereas with Volta it literally takes two seconds."
- Embargoed: 2nd September 2019 11:56
- Keywords: VR virtual reality mixing DJ music mixing Volta floating spheres
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Science
- Reuters ID: LVA00BASVWLLN
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: A graduate from London's Royal College of Art (RCA) has created a music mixing tool which allows people to go "inside the mixing desk" using virtual reality.
Volta, which requires Oculus Rift or HTC VIVE virtual reality equipment, makes tracks such as drums, backing vocals and lead guitars appear as floating spheres to the user.
Using VR controllers the user can move the spheres, changing the perceived orientation of the sound.
They can also raise and lower the volume of tracks, record and play back their movement around the user.
"Volta is a spatial audio production platform that you use in virtual reality," Kane told Reuters.
"Effectively you can build a whole track, you can build an orchestra around you," he added.
The tool was Kane's thesis project which he has been working on for just over a year.
It works alongside digital audio workstations, connects to any audio production software and requires a virtual studio technology plugin.
"Instead of having these abstractions like knobs and sliders you could use your body to compose and to produce and to mix and make the production process itself more expressive," Kane said.
Volta is still in development and is being piloted with music artists. Kane forsees it being available to the public in a year's time when he also expects it to work on augmented reality glasses.
(Production: Stuart McDill, George Sargent) - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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