Vocaloop

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When we have ideas, dreams, or music in our heads, they usually go into a journal for safe keeping. But for musicians, the vocal recorder app on our phones is the only tool for a quick mobile recording solution. Because two of us in the group work with music regularly, the idea to re-invent this wheel came immediately. The technology of multi-track loop recording is already out there, but not in a convenient to use and simple UI on an app. After flushing out the features, menus and design, determining what coding language we needed to use in order to create this app was the second step. We ended up in a tug of war between the capabilities of Python, with the attractive UI/speed of Swift and iOS. The audio-exclusive language Faust was a close third, having a wide array of options for audio programming. Lackluster UI and poor interface with graphics were immediate downsides for using Python, while SwiftUI has trouble utilizing complex audio assets that we need for Vocaloop. This became one of our first challenges, while transferring all of the code into a mobile-ready application being the second. We learned not to assume a project is simple just because the components seem to be. (Don't judge a book by it's cover)