Pressure Project#1: Pitch, Please.

Description: Pitch, Please is a voice-activated, self-generating patch where your voice runs the entire experience. The patch unfolds across three interactive sequences, each translating the frequency from audio input into something you can see and play with. No keyboard, no mouse, just whatever sounds you’re willing to make in public.

Reflection

I did not exactly know what I wanted for this project, but I knew I wanted something light, colorful, interactive, and fun. While I believe I got what I intended out of this project, I also did get some nice surprises!

The patch starts super simple. The first sequence is a screen that says SING! That’s it. And the moment someone makes a sound, the system responds. Font size grows and shrinks, and background colors shift depending on frequency. It worked as both onboarding and instruction, and made everyone realize their voice was doing something.

The second sequence is a Flappy Bird-esque game where a ball has to dodge hurdles. The environment was pretty simple and bare-bones, with moving hurdles and a color-changing background. You just have to sing a note, and make the ball jump. This is where things got fun. Everyone had gotten comfortable at this point. There was a lot more experimentation, and a lot more freedom.

The final sequence is a soothing black screen, with a trail of rings moving across the screen like those old screensavers. Again, audio input controls the ring size and color. Honestly, this one was just made as an afterthought because three sequences sounded about right in my head. So, I was pretty surprised when majority of the class enjoyed this one the best. It’s just something about old-school screensaver aesthetic. Hard to beat.

What surprised me most was how social it became. I was alone at home when I made this and I didn’t have anyone test it so, it wasn’t really made with collaboration in mind, but it happened anyway. I thought people would interact one at a time. Instead, it turned into a group activity. There was whistling, clapping and even opera singing. (Michael sang an Aria!) At one point people were even teaming up, and giving instructions to each other on what to do.

When I started this project, I had a very different idea in my mind. I couldn’t figure it out though, and just wasted a couple hours. I then moved on to this idea of a voice controlled flappy-duck game, and started thinking about the execution it in the most minimal way possible (because again, time). This one took me a while, but I reused the code for the other two sequences and managed to get decent results within the timeframe. There’s something about knowing there is a time limit. It just awakens a primal instinct in me that kind of died after the era of formal timed exams in my life ended. In short, I pretty much went into hyperdrive and delivered. I’m sure I would’ve wasted a lot more time on the same project if there was no time limit. I’m glad there was.

That said, could it be more polished? Yes. Was this the best I could do in this timeframe? I don’t know, but it is what it is. If I HAD to work on it further, I’d add a buffer at the start so the stage doesn’t just start playing all of a sudden. I would also smooth out the hypersensitivity of the first sequence which makes it look very glitchy and headache-inducing. But honestly, with the resources that I had, Pitch, Please turned out decent. I mean, I got people to play, loudly, badly, collaboratively, and with zero shame, using nothing but their voice. Which was kind of the whole point.